Homolytic bond formation

Figure 3.9b portrays homolytic bond formation by the recombination of radicals and is accompanied by charge transfer from A to B. The radicals must be singlet coupled. The interaction of triplet-coupled electron pairs is repulsive and does not lead to bond formation. The reverse process describes homolytic bond cleavage and results in singlet-coupled free radicals. 

Homolytic bond formation can occur when two free-radical species contact each other. Each has an available unpaired electron, and if these two electrons are shared, a new bond will result. 

A free-radical reaction is a chemical process which involves molecules having unpaired electrons. The radical species could be a starting compound or a product, but the most common cases are reactions that involve radicals as intermediates. Most of the reactions discussed to this point have been heterolytic processes involving polar intermediates and/or transition states in which all electrons remained paired throughout the course of the reaction. In radical reactions, homolytic bond cleavages occur. The generalized reactions shown below illustrate the formation of alkyl, vinyl, and aryl free radicals by hypothetical homolytic processes. 

A photochemical variant, the so-called photo-Fries rearrangement, proceeds via intermediate formation of radical species. Upon irradiation the phenyl ester molecules (1) are promoted into an excited state 11. By homolytic bond cleavage the radical-pair 12 is formed that reacts to the semiquinone 13, which in turn tautomerizes to the p-acylphenol 3. The corresponding ort/zo-derivative is formed in an analogous way ... 

A crystal structure of the C02 derivative of (8), K[Co(salen)( 71-C02)], haso been reported in which the Co—C bond is 1.99 A, the C—O bonds are both equivalent at 1.22 A and the O-C-O angle is 132°.125 Carboxylation of benzylic and allylic chlorides with C02 in THF-HMPA was achieved with (8) electrogenerated by controlled-potential electrolysis,126 in addition to reductive coupling of methyl pyruvate, diethyl ketomalonate and / -tolylcarbodiimide via C—C bond formation. Methyl pyruvate is transformed into diastereomeric tartrates concomitant with oxidation to the divalent Co(salen) and a free-radical mechanism is proposed involving the homolytic cleavage of the Co—C bond. However, reaction with diphenylketene (DPK) suggests an alternative pathway for the reductive coupling of C02-like compounds. 

Alternative paths for decomposition of the metal carboxylate can lead to ketones, acid anhydrides, esters, acid fluorides (1,11,22,68,77,78), and various coupling products (21,77,78), and aspects of these reactions have been reviewed (1,11). Competition from these routes is often substantial when thermal decomposition is carried out in the absence of a solvent (Section III,D), and their formation is attributable to homolytic pathways (11,21,77,78). Other alternative paths are reductive elimination rather than metal-carbon bond formation [Eq. (36)] (Section III,B) and formation of metal-oxygen rather than metal-carbon bonded compounds [e.g., Eqs. (107) (119) and (108) (120). Reactions (36) and (108) are reversible, and C02 activation (116) is involved in the reverse reactions (48,120). 

Processes accompanied by a decrease in volume, such as C—C bond formation, in which the distance between two carbon atoms decreases from the van der Waals distance of ca 3.6 A to the bonding distance of ca 1.5 A, are accelerated by raising the pressure and equilibria are shifted toward the side of products (AV < 0, AV < 0). The reverse reaction, a homolytic bond cleavage, leads to an increase in volume (AV / > 0, AV > 0). Pressure induces a deceleration of such a process and a shift in equilibrium toward the side of reactants. However, in an ionization, such as an ionic dissociation, the attractive interaction between the ions generated and the solvent molecules leads to a contraction... 

The general Lewis-acid-base reaction (3.95) exemplifies the two-electron stabilizing donor-acceptor interaction of Fig. 1.3 (namely the nN->-nB interaction for (3.94)), which may be distinguished from the complementary bi-directional donor-acceptor interactions of covalent-bond formation (Section 3.2.1). However, this leaves open the question of whether (or how) the equilibrium bond reflects the formal difference between heterolytic (3.95) and homolytic (3.96) bond formation. 

Heats of formation of neutral molecules, AHf(RH), can be obtained from combustion data with high accuracy. Bond dissociation energies can either be derived for homolytic bond dissociation... 

Table 2.2. Homolytic bond dissociation enthalpies, AHohom. and heats of formation, AHf(x.), of some selected bonds and radicals [kJ mol ] ...

The potential energy curves of a neutral molecule AB and the potential ionic products from processes 7.18-7.20 are compared below (Fig. 7.11). These graphs reveal that the formation of negative molecular ions, AB, is energetically much more favorable than homolytic bond dissociation of AB and that the AB " ions have internal energies close to the activation energy for dissociation. [65,73,75]... 

The semiempirical AMI MO method has been used to calculate heats of formation of a series of m- and p-substituted benzene and toluene derivatives ArY and ArCHaY, and their phenyl or benzyl cations, anions, and radicals heterolytic and homolytic bond dissociation energies (BDEs) and electron transfer energies for the ions have also been calculated and the relationship A//het = A//et-I-AWhomo has been confirmed (it being noted that A//homo is insensitive to ring substituents). The linear relationship found between and the appropriate HOMO or LUMO... 

An example of C—Si bond formation concludes this overview of carbon heteroatom bond formation. Reflux of bromide 62 in benzene and in the presence of small amounts of (TMS)3SiH and AIBN afforded the silabicycle 63 in 88 % yield (Reaction 7.64) [76]. The key step for this transformation is the intramolecular homolytic substitution at the central silicon atom, which occurred with a rate constant of 2.4 x 10 s at 80 °C (see also Section 6.4). The reaction has also been extended to the analogous vinyl bromide (Reaction 7.65) [49]. 

The oxidation pathways for alkylated heteroaromatics start with the formation of a radical species, via hydrogen atom loss or alkyl group homolytic bond cleavage. We calculated these BDEs for methyl- and ethyl-substituted derivatives of several key heteroaromatics (Tables 1-3). Few of these experimental values exist therefore. 

SCHEME 18. A singlet-biradical forming process. When the Mg—O bond formation proceeds, the left-side t-Bu group is pushed away as a i-Bu via homolytic C—Mg cleavage... 

In view of the present calculated results, the SET mechanism would be described as follows. Basically, the polar four-center reaction in Scheme 14 leads to C—C bond formation. However, when the alkyl group is bulky, only the two-center (Mg—O) reaction takes place. The aUcyl-Mg bond is cleaved homolytically owing to the persistent Mg tetravalency and the stability of the resultant radical species. Hence, biradical intermediates are formed not by a single electron transfer but by the C—Mg homolytic scission. 

Examples of radical-mediated C-alkylations are listed in Table 5.4. In these examples, radicals are formed by halogen abstraction with tin radicals (Entries 1 and 2), by photolysis of Barton esters (Entry 3), and by the reduction of organomercury compounds (Entry 4). Carbohydrate-derived, polystyrene-bound a-haloesters undergo radical allylation with allyltributyltin with high diastereoselectivity (97% de [41]). Cleavage from supports by homolytic bond fission with simultaneous formation of C-H or C-C bonds is considered in Section 3.16. 

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