Orbital symmetry control

Concerted cycloadditions are observed with heterocyclics of all ring sizes. The heterocycles can react directly, or via a valence tautomer, and they can utilize all or just a part of unsaturated moieties in their rings. With three-membered rings, ylides are common reactive valence tautomers. Open chain 47T-systems are observed as intermediates with four-membered rings, and bicyclic valence tautomers are commonly reactive species in additions by large rings. Very often these reactive valence tautomers are formed under orbital symmetry control, both by thermal and by photochemical routes. 

Diene moieties, reactive in [2 + 4] additions, can be formed from benzazetines by ring opening to azaxylylenes (Section 5.09.4.2.3). 3,4-Bis(trifluoromethyl)-l,2-dithietene is in equilibrium with hexafluorobutane-2,3-dithione, which adds alkenes to form 2,3-bis-(trifluoromethyl)-l,4-dithiins (Scheme 17 Section 5.15.2.4.6). Systems with more than two conjugated double bonds can react by [6ir + 2ir] processes, which in azepines can compete with the [47t + 27t] reaction (Scheme 18 Section 5.16.3.8.1). Oxepins prefer to react as 47t components, through their oxanorcaradiene isomer, in which the 47r-system is nearly planar (Section 5.17.2.2.5). Thiepins behave similarly (Section 5.17.2.4.4). Nonaromatic heteronins also react in orbital symmetry-controlled [4 + 2] and [8 + 2] cycloadditions (Scheme 19 Section 5.20.3.2.2). 

Suggest mechanisms for the following reactions. Classify the orbital symmetry-controlled process as clearly as you can with respect to type. 

The photochemistry of alkenes and dienes has already been mentioned in connection with the principles of orbital symmetry control in electrocyclic and cycloaddition processes in Section 13.2. Cycloadditions are considered, from a synthetic viewpoint, in Chapter 6 of Part B. This section will emphasize unimolecular photoreactions of alkenes and dienes. 

Orbital symmetry control of subsequent ring opening could account for isomerization at only one of the double bonds. Taking ij/ as the controlling frontier orbital, it can be seen that a concerted return to ip2 to rotation at only one terminus of the diene ... 

Cheletropic reactions include both addition and elimination reaction. The number of elimination reactions that have been studied in detail is not large but there is sufficient information to establish that orbital symmetry controls are operating. 

Chlorination of olefins has also been achieved with SbCls in chlorinated solvents, which gives with mono-olefins vicinal dichloroalkanes by a syn addition. A concerted mechanism was initially proposed68 to rationalize this stereochemical behavior and the unexpectedly large amount of c -l,4-dichloro-2-butene found in the reaction of butadiene. In this case, however, because of orbital symmetry control it has been suggested that the addition occurs in an antarafacial direction69. 

Dyotropic rearrangements are uncatalyzed concerted dihydrogen exchange reactions, another class of orbital symmetry controlled processes, which involve the simultaneous migration of two cr-bonds. These conversions can be both thermal and photochemical. They can be subdivided into two types (1) reactions in which two migrating cr-bonds interchange their positions (equation 78), and (2) reactions without such positional interchange (equation 79)91,92. 

Again it has to be noted that the frontier orbitals participating in such a valence isomerization are delocalized over the whole molecule [22]. This has consequences for the orbital symmetry and, thereby, a prior analogy with comparable processes involving 6 t-electrons only is not given. However, compared with smaller Jt-systems the selection rules for orbital symmetry controlled processes in fullerenes seem to be less restrictive, since a large number of tt-orbitals with small energy separation are available. Calculations at the AM 1 and PM3 level show that the photocycKzation... 

The thermolysis of cycloalkenes is often a more facile process than for the cycloalkenes. Cyclobutene undergoes thermolysis at 175 °C and yields butadiene in an orbital symmetry controlled reaction as shown by stereochemical studies of... 

Early work (B-69MI51600) on 7V-substituted-l//-azepines revealed that they undergo photoinduced ring contraction to bicyclic valence tautomers as indicated in Scheme 1. Subsequently, it has been found that 3H- and 4H- azepines enter into analogous ring contractions, as do some of their oxo and benzo derivatives. These transformations, which parallel those undergone by cycloheptatriene, are often thermally reversible and occur by an orbital symmetry-controlled disrotatory electrocyclic process. 

The spontaneous oxepin-benzene oxide isomerization proceeds in accordance with the Woodward-Hoffmann rules of orbital symmetry control and may thus be classified as an allowed thermal disrotatory electrocyclic reaction. A considerable amount of structural information about both oxepin and benzene oxide has been obtained from theoretical calculations using ab initio SCF and semiempirical (MINDO/3) MO calculations (80JA1255). Thus the oxepin ring was predicted to be either a flattened boat structure (MINDO/3) or a planar ring (SCF), indicative of a very low barrier to interconversion between boat conformations. Both methods of calculation indicated that the benzene oxide tautomer... 

A further example of a concerted thermal elimination reaction of a thiepane derivative was the formation of c/s-hexatriene and the extrusion of sulfur dioxide from heating 2,7-dihydrothiepin 1,1-dioxide (116) (67JA1281). That this reaction was under orbital symmetry control was deduced from the results obtained by heating cis- (117) and trans-... 

Thermal extrusion of a sulfur atom is the most common thermal reaction of a thiepin. The mechanism of this thermal process involves two orbital symmetry controlled reactions (69CC1167). The initial concerted step involving a reversible disrotatory electrocyclic rearrangement is followed by a concerted cheleotropic elimination of sulfur (Scheme 29). Similar aromatization reactions occur with thiepin 1-oxides and thiepin 1,1-dioxides, accompanied by the extrusion of sulfur monoxide and sulfur dioxide respectively. Since only a summary of the major factors influencing the thermal stability of thiepins was given in Section... 

The orbital symmetry controlled photoisomerization of 1-benzothiepin (46) and derivatives (equation 32) is one of the few reported photochemical reactions on thiepins (72TL4597, 76BCJ825). 

Additional evidence for a stepwise pathway is provided by the fact that a two-step Diels-Alder reaction is observed, in which a formal [2 + 2] reaction gives a vinylcyclobutane (64) which then rearranges to the formal [4 + 2] product (Scheme 41, An = P-CH3OC6H4)118. It has been shown that orbital symmetry control does not operate in these reactions Symmetry-allowed and symmetry-forbidden reactions may take place with equal facility depending upon the conditions119. It has also been shown that the obtention of formally [4 + 2] or [2 + 2] products depends on many factors, including solvent and whether it is the diene or the dienophile which is ionized120. 

Many chemical processes are initiated simply by mixing the appropriate reagents, and (usually) the higher the temperature, the faster the reaction rate such reactions are classified as thermally activated or thermal reactions. Sometimes, thermal activation is not enough to initiate the reaction or, in orbital-symmetry-controlled concerted processes, initiates the wrong reaction, and photochemical activation is necessary. Although the procedure to obtain a mechanistic rate law also applies for photochemical reactions, we shall not consider them specifically in this chapter. 

These considerations are borne out by results observed for 1,2- and 3,4-diphenyl derivatives in solution (Sect. 4.4). Schuster and coworkers detected the 1,2-diphenyl species 91 by optical spectroscopy at room temperature and found that it was thermally stable under these conditions [268]. In contrast, Miyashi and coworkers found that the 3,4-diphenyl derivative, under comparable conditions, suffered ring opening [266], Remarkably, this reaction occurs with the same stereochemistry as the orbital symmetry controlled reaction of the neutral precursor. 

---