Radical reactions substituent effects

Although the effect of changing the solvent on the thermolysis of azo compounds is small (see Table 3.2), as it is typical for radical reactions, the effect of varying the substituents, and especially R2 (Table 3.3) on the decomposition temperature is relatively large. As a consequence, simply by varying the substituents, it is possible to control the temperature at which an azo compound will decompose over a very wide temperature range. 

Analogous to the corresponding OH radical reactions, the effects of non-alkyl substituent groups around the >C=C< bond can be taken into account using substituent group factors C(X), with C(-alkyl) = 1.0 by definition. However, values of C(X) for the N03 radical and 03 reactions have not been tabulated in the literature, in part because of the smaller database for the N03 radical and 03 reactions than for the corresponding OH radical reactions. 

As is broadly true for aromatic compounds, the a- or benzylic position of alkyl substituents exhibits special reactivity. This includes susceptibility to radical reactions, because of the. stabilization provided the radical intermediates. In indole derivatives, the reactivity of a-substituents towards nucleophilic substitution is greatly enhanced by participation of the indole nitrogen. This effect is strongest at C3, but is also present at C2 and to some extent in the carbocyclic ring. The effect is enhanced by N-deprotonation. 

For most vinyl polymers, head-to-tail addition is the dominant mode of addition. Variations from this generalization become more common for polymerizations which are carried out at higher temperatures. Head-to-head addition is also somewhat more abundant in the case of halogenated monomers such as vinyl chloride. The preponderance of head-to-tail additions is understood to arise from a combination of resonance and steric effects. In many cases the ionic or free-radical reaction center occurs at the substituted carbon due to the possibility of resonance stabilization or electron delocalization through the substituent group. Head-to-tail attachment is also sterically favored, since the substituent groups on successive repeat units are separated by a methylene... 

Despite some recent discoveries, free radical reactions are still very much less common in azole chemistry than those involving electrophilic or nucleophilic reagents. In some reactions involving free radicals, substituents have little orienting effect however, rather selective radical reactions are now known. 

The transition state involves six partially delocalized electrons being transformed from one 1,5-diene system to another. The transition state could range in character from a 1,4-diradical to two nearly independent allyl radicals, depending on whether bond making or bond breaking is more advanced. The general framework for understanding the substituent effects is that the reactions are concerted with a relatively late transition state with well-developed C(l)—C(6) bonds. 

Nevertheless, many free-radical processes respond to introduction of polar substituents, just as do heterolytic processes that involve polar or ionic intermediates. The substituent effects on toluene bromination, for example, are correlated by the Hammett equation, which gives a p value of — 1.4, indicating that the benzene ring acts as an electron donor in the transition state. Other radicals, for example the t-butyl radical, show a positive p for hydrogen abstraction reactions involving toluene. ... 

Similarly, carboxylic acid and ester groups tend to direct chlorination to the / and v positions, because attack at the a position is electronically disfavored. The polar effect is attributed to the fact that the chlorine atom is an electrophilic species, and the relatively electron-poor carbon atom adjacent to an electron-withdrawing group is avoided. The effect of an electron-withdrawing substituent is to decrease the electron density at the potential radical site. Because the chlorine atom is highly reactive, the reaction would be expected to have a very early transition state, and this electrostatic effect predominates over the stabilizing substituent effect on the intermediate. The substituent effect dominates the kinetic selectivity of the reaction, and the relative stability of the radical intermediate has relatively little influence. 

The traditional means of assessment of the sensitivity of radical reactions to polar factors and establishing the electrophilicity or nucleophilieity of radicals is by way of a Hammett op correlation. Thus, the reactions of radicals with substituted styrene derivatives have been examined to demonstrate that simple alkyl radicals have nucleophilic character38,39 while haloalkyl radicals40 and oxygcn-ccntcrcd radicals " have electrophilic character (Tabic 1.4). It is anticipated that electron-withdrawing substituents (e.g. Cl, F, C02R, CN) will enhance overall reactivity towards nucleophilic radicals and reduce reactivity towards electrophilic radicals. Electron-donating substituents (alkyl) will have the opposite effect. 

The very high levels of head addition and the substituent effects reported in these studies are inconsistent with expectations based on knowledge of the reactions of small radicals (see 2.3) and are at odds with structures formed in the intermolecular step of cyclopolymerization of diallyl monomers (see 4.4.1.1) where overwhelming tail addition is seen. 

Free radical substituent effects have also been probed through the kinetics of rearrangement of 3-aryl-2,2-dimethylmethylenecyclopropanes 40 to 41252. The reaction... 

When free radicals are added to 1,5- or 1,6-dienes, the initially formed radical (9) can add intramolecularly to the other bond, leading to a cyclic product (10). When the radical is generated from an precursor that gives vinyl radical 11, however, cyclization leads to 12, which is in equilibrium with cyclopropylcarbinyl radical 13 via a 5-exo-trig reaction. A 6-endo-trig reaction leads to 14, but unless there are perturbing substituent effects, however, cyclopropanation should be the major process. 

Lithiation of diaiylbenzotriazol-l-ylmethanes 56 followed by addition of copper iodide gave 6-arylphenanthridine derivatives 57 in moderate yields. According to the substituent effect, it was suggested that the reactions proceed via radical intermediates <96JHC(33)607>. 

Displacements such as this show all the usual characteristics of electrophilic aromatic substitution (substituent effects, etc., see below), but they are normally of much less preparative significance than the examples we have already considered. In face of all the foregoing discussion of polar intermediates it is pertinent to point out that homolytic aromatic substitution reactions, i.e. by radicals, are also known (p. 331) as too is attack by nucleophiles (p. 167). 

Substituent Effects in Some Reactions of Probable Radical Mechanism... 

When the reaction is well-established as a radical one it is still possible to find explanations of polar substituent effects, usually in terms of ion-radical intermediates, dipole-dipole repulsion, solvation, or charge-transfer structures like those postulated for -complexes.488 Reac-... 

The general structure with a cyanine unit at one terminus is represented in Figure 16. Two-electron transfer of the hybrid system produces another cyanine substructure via neutral radical state. In this case, a two step redox reaction is expected, because the neutral radical state is stabilized by the capto-dative substituents effect (19). Therefore, three colored sates will be achieved by the hybrid system. We call this system a cyanine-cyanine hybrid. 

One point of debate in defining the magnitude of the captodative effect has been the separation of substituent effects on the radical itself as compared to that on the closed shell reference system. This is, as stated before, a general problem for all definitions of radical stability based on isodesmic reactions such as Eq. 1 [7,74,76], but becomes particularly important in multiply substituted cases. This problem can be approached either through estimating the substituent effects for the closed shell parents separately [77,78], or through the use of isodesmic reactions such as Eq. 5, in which only open shell species are present ... 

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