Other Interconversions

The normal method of choice for the preparation of sulphonamides is by reaction of sulphonic acid derivatives with ammonia and amines. These reactions are covered in this section, together with other interconversions of sulphur(VI)-containing compounds to sulphonamides. 

These reactions almost certainly involve carbonium-ion intermediates, as do nearly all other interconversions in the 5-methyl-2-cyclohexenyl system . The kinetic and stereochemical results, however, lead to the surprising conclusion that the conjugate acids of the cis and trans alcohols do not dissociate to the same carbonium ion. Goering et ai rationalized the experimental data by assuming that the isomeric alcohols react mainly via quasi-axial conformations which give rise to carbonium ions differing conformationally and in the manner in which they are solvated. These carbonium ion collapse to products more rapidly than they are interconverted. 

In the former examples we applied afunctional group addition to create target molecules that are more convenient for disconnection. This concept and other interconversions of functional groups are practiced in the examples that follow. 

In a similar way Table II summarizes how the phase changes upon interconversion among the isomers. Inspection of the two tables shows that for any loop containing three of the possible isomers (open chain and cyclobutene ones), the phase either does not change, or changes twice. Thus, there cannot be a conical intersection inside any of these loops in other words, photochemical transformations between these species only cannot occur via a conical intersection, regardless of the nature of the excited state. 

Reactions represent the dynamic aspect of chemistry, the interconversion of chemical compounds. Chemical reactions produce the compounds that are sold by industry and that play a big role in maintaining the standard of living of our society they transform the food that we take up in our body into energy and into other compounds and they provide the energy for surviving in a hostile environment and the energy for a large part of our transportation systems. 

Structures A and A are nonsuperimposable mirror images of each other Thus although as 1 2 dichloro cyclohexane is chiral it is optically inactive when chair-chair interconversion occurs Such interconver Sion IS rapid at room temperature and converts opti cally active A to a racemic mixture of A and A Because A and A are enantiomers interconvertible by a conformational change they are sometimes re ferred to as conformational enantiomers... 

Phenyllithium can be used in Grignard-type reactions involving attachment of phenyl group, eg, in the preparation of analgesics and other chemotherapeutic agents (qv). It also may be used in metal—metal interconversion reactions leading, eg, to phenyl-substituted siUcon and tin organics. 

Selectivities to various isomers are more difficult to predict when metal oxides are used as catalysts. ZnO preferentially produced 79% 1-butene and several percent of i7j -2-butene [624-64-6] (75). CdO catalyst produced 55% 1-butene and 45% i7j -2-butene. It was also reported that while interconversion between 1-butene and i7j -2-butene was quite facile on CdO, cis—trans isomeri2ation was slow. This was attributed to the presence of a TT-aHyl anion intermediate (76). High i7j -2-butene selectivities were obtained with molybdenum carbonyl encapsulated in 2eohtes (77). On the other hand, deuteration using H1O2 catalyst produced predominantly the 1,4-addition product, trans-2-huX.en.e-d2 with no isotope scrambling (78). 

In dimers composed of equal molecules the dimer components can replace each other through tunneling. This effect has been discovered by Dyke et al. [1972] as interconversion splitting of rotational levels of (HF)2 in molecular beam electric resonance spectra. This dimer has been studied in many papers by microwave and far infrared tunable difference-frequency laser spectroscopy (see review papers by Truhlar [1990] and by Quack and Suhm [1991]). The dimer consists of two inequivalent HE molecules, the H atom of one of them participating in the hydrogen bond between the fluorine atoms (fig. 60). PES is a function of six variables indicated in this figure. 

In addition to constitution and configuration, there is a third important level of structure, that of conformation. Conformations are discrete molecular arrangements that differ in spatial arrangement as a result of facile rotations about single bonds. Usually, conformers are in thermal equilibrium and cannot be separated. The subject of conformational interconversion will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3. A special case of stereoisomerism arises when rotation about single bonds is sufficiently restricted by steric or other factors that- the different conformations can be separated. The term atropisomer is applied to stereoisomers that result fk m restricted bond rotation. ... 

Cyclopentane is nonplanar, and the two minimum-energy geometries are the envelope and half-chair. In the envelope conformation, one carbon atom is displaced from the plane of the other four. In the half-chair conformation, three carbons are coplanar, vdth one of the remaining two being above the plane and the other below. The energy differences between the conformers are very small, and interconversion is rapid. All of the carbon atoms r idly move through planar and nonplanar positions. The process is called pseudorotation. 

The same arguments can be applied to other energetically facile interconversions of two potential reactants. For example, many organic molecules undergo rapid proton shifts (tautomerism), and the chemical reactivity of the two isomers may be quite different It is not valid, however, to deduce the ratio of two tautomers on the basis of subsequent reactions that have activation energies greater than that of the tautomerism. Just as in the case of conformational isomerism, the ratio of products formed in subsequent reactions will not be controlled by the position of the facile equilibrium. 

The cyclobutene-butadiene interconversion can serve as an example of the reasoning employed in construction of an orbital correlation diagram. For this reaction, the four n orbitals of butadiene are converted smoothly into the two n and two a orbitals of the ground state of cyclobutene. The analysis is done as shown in Fig. 11.3. The n orbitals of butadiene are ip2, 3, and ij/. For cyclobutene, the four orbitals are a, iz, a, and n. Each of the orbitals is classified with respect to the symmetiy elements that are maintained in the course of the transformation. The relevant symmetry features depend on the structure of the reacting system. The most common elements of symmetiy to be considered are planes of symmetiy and rotation axes. An orbital is classified as symmetric (5) if it is unchanged by reflection in a plane of symmetiy or by rotation about an axis of symmetiy. If the orbital changes sign (phase) at each lobe as a result of the symmetry operation, it is called antisymmetric (A). Proper MOs must be either symmetric or antisymmetric. If an orbital is not sufficiently symmetric to be either S or A, it must be adapted by eombination with other orbitals to meet this requirement. 

Correlation diagrams can be constructed in an analogous fashion for the disrotatory and conrotatory modes for interconversion of hexatriene and cyclohexadiene. They lead to the prediction that the disrotatory mode is an allowed process whereas the conrotatory reaction is forbidden. This is in agreement with the experimental results on this reaction. Other electrocyclizations can be analyzed by the same method. Substituted derivatives of polyenes obey the orbital symmetry rules, even in cases in which the substitution pattern does not correspond in symmetiy to the orbital system. It is the symmetry of the participating orbitals, not of the molecule as a whole, that is crucial to the analysis. 

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