Norbornenyl

By the addition of organotin hydrides to norbomene and norboma-diene, and subsequent reactions of the products, a variety of nor-bomyl-, norbornenyl-, and nortricyclyl-tin compounds has been isolated, and identified (67-69). 

Recent examples of these reactions are the preparation of a series of norbornyl-, norbornenyl-, and norbornadienyl-tin compounds (87) 1-AdSnMes, (l-Ad)4Sn and 2-AdSnMes (Ad = adamantyl) (81, 83) Pr8SnCH=CHCH=CHj (83) and (Me3Sn)4C (82). 

The consideration of HO—LU interaction is useful also in the interpretation of the stability of "nonclassical carbonium ions. For instance, the 7-norbornenyl cation would be stabilized by the symmetry-allowed... 

Other monomeric precursors similar to 6-hexynyl-decaborane such as 6-norbornenyl-decaborane (129) and 6-cyclooctenyl-decaborane (131) (Fig. 75) underwent ROMP in the presence of either first- or second-generation Grubbs catalysts to produce the corresponding poly(norbornenyl-decaborane) (130) (Fig. 75) and poly(cyclooctenyl-decaborane) (132) (Fig. 75) with Mn > 30 kDa and polydis-persities between 1.1 and 1.8.152 Electrostatic spinning and pyrolysis of poly (norbomenyl-decaborane) was discovered to produce nanoscale, free-standing porous boron-carbide/carbon, ceramic fiber matrices.153... 

For some homoaromatic carbocations the NICS values and chemical shifts have been calculated.105,106 IGLO-HF and GIAO-MP2 calculated 13C NMR chemical shifts for bishomoaromatic 7-norbornenyl 90 and 7-norbornadienyl cation 91 have also been reported.107... 

The present study reports the synthesis, characterization and thermal reactions of phenyl and carbomethoxy substituted norbornenyl imides. These substrates were designed to model the reactive end-caps of the PMR-15 resin and allow an assessment of the effect that conjugating substituents would have on the high temperature cure of such systems. The effect of these substituents on both monomer isomerization and polymerization is reported and a possible use of the phenyl substituent as a probe of polymer structure is suggested. 

The thermal polymerization of reactive polyimide oligomers is a critical part of a number of currently important polymers. Both the system in which we are interested, PMR-15, and others like it (LARC-13, HR-600), are useful high temperature resins. They also share the feature that, while the basic structure and chemistry of their imide portions is well defined, the mode of reaction and ultimately the structures that result from their thermally activated end-groups is not clear. Since an understanding of this thermal cure would be an important step towards the improvement of both the cure process and the properties of such systems, we have approached our study of PMR-15 with a focus only on this higher temperature thermal curing process. To this end, we have used small molecule model compounds with pre-formed imide moieties and have concentrated on the chemistry of the norbornenyl end-cap (1). 

PN and Parent Exo PX) have unsubstituted norbornenyl rings and differ from each other only in the stereochemistry of their ring fusion. These compounds have been elaborated by the incorporation of either a phenyl (tf>) or a carbomethoxy (C) group in the bridgehead (B) or vinyl (V) positions. Thus, the notation VN represents PN with a phenyl substituent at a vinyl position, while CBX represents PX with a carbomethoxy substituent at the bridgehead position. The isomerization and polymerization chemistry of these nine compounds (PN, PX, 4>BN, (jiVN, (jiVX, CBN, CBX, CVN, CVX) are the main concerns of our work. 

The first phase of our efforts was the unambiguous synthesis of each model substrate. PN and PX were already well characterized materials (1) While direct synthesis of the phenyl and carbomethoxy compounds from PN and/or PX was attempted, this approach was unsuccessful due to the sluggish reactivity of the norbornenyl double bonds in these molecules (2). A successful approach to CBN and (fiBN based on N-phenyl maleimide (NPMI) trapping of the respective thermodynamically favored 1-substituted cyclopentadienes is shown in Equation 1. Similarly, kinetic trapping of 2-phenyl cyclopentadiene, from the in situ dehydration of 3-hydroxy, 3-phenyl cyclopentene, gives a clean yield of (f)VN (Equation 2). The remaining phenyl isomer (VX) and the three other carbomethoxy isomers (CBX, CVN, CVX) were all obtained by the thermal isomerization chemistry described in the next section of this paper. They were each isolated in pure form by liquid chromatography We were unable to obtain any (f)BX or any of the 7-substituted isomers by any means. 

All of the isomerization data shown above is consistent with the normal electrocyclic reaction chemistry expected for such substrates (4). That such fused norbornenyl systems undergo exo/endo isomerization via Diels Alder/retro Diels Alder reactions has been explicitly proven for simple cyclopentadiene-maleic anhydride adducts (5) and... 

It is clear that any kind of addition polymerization of the norbornenyl double bond will benefit from the electronic stabilization provided by a conjugating substituent. A simple radical addition process such as is known for both styrene and acrylate monomers may be a reasonable analogy to our system. Whether this effect alone is enough to account for our observations is not clear. A possible additional effect, at least in the case of the phenyl substituted monomers, is suggested below as part of our work on polymer structure. 

Having established the effect of substitution on the rates of both monomer isomerization and polymerization, we addressed the question of polymer structure. Specifically, are norbornenyl imide units incorporated into the fully cured polymer with their norbornyl rings intact If so, does the polymer also reflect the equilibrium ratio of exo and endo ring fused monomers For our parent monomers, PN and PX, this question has been unanswerable. We have not found any direct probe that allows an unambiguous assessment of specific substructures within the cured polymer. We do, however, have some evidence bearing on this question for the phenyl substituted monomer. This evidence is attributable in part to our discovery of an unexpected side-reaction in the cure of the phenyl substituted monomer, and in part to the presence of a unique NMR diagnostic for phenyl substituted, endo norbornyl N-phenyl imides. Both of these results are detailed below. 

Our syntheses of these new materials showed that both hydrogenation and epoxidation occurred exclusively from the exo face of both VN and < >VX. This is consistent with extensive literature precedent for a variety of reactions on norbornenyl double bonds (9). H1 NMR spectroscopy of these materials also revealed an interesting pattern. All phenyl substituted compounds with endo imide rings (< >VN, HYVN, VNE) evidenced signals due to one of the ten aromatic protons (five on each phenyl ring) being shifted to unusually high field (6.4 +. 16). This is consistent with a field effect on a proton of one of... 

A5 C(C1) = —29.8, (A5 C(C1) = —54.5) are observed and a relatively large /(C2H) coupling constant of 165.9 Hz is detected. This counter-intuitive low-frequency shift of the C NMR resonance of Cl and C2 as well as the large scalar CH coupling constant was rationalized for similar bishomoaromatic carbon cations like the 7-norbornenyl cation, 79, by the hypercoordinated nature of the vinylic C atoms and was put forward as spectroscopic evidence for bishomoaromaticity. " ... 

Saturated 2-vinyl-5(47Z)-oxazolones have been widely used as intermediates for the synthesis of polymeric compounds that will be described in Section 7.3.2.9. Apart from these polymerization reactions, the Diels-Alder reactions of 4-sub-stituted-2-vinyl-5(47/)-oxazolones 134 with cyclopentadiene are reported to give norbomenyl oxazolones 135 that are useful to prepare norbornenyl functionalized resins by azlactone ring-opening addition reactions (Scheme 7.39). 

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