Radicals substituent effects

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

Fig. 10.12. Frontier orbital interpretation of radical substituent effects.

Similarly to the triphenylmethyl system, captodative-substituted 1,5-hexa-dienes, which can be cleaved thermally in solution into the corresponding substituted allyl radicals [15], dissociate more easily than dicaptor-substituted systems (Van Hoecke et al., 1986). Since ground-state and radical substituent effects cannot be separated cleanly, not only because of electronic but also because of steric effects, a conclusive answer cannot be provided. 

Crystal structures of ethylmagnesium bromide Crystal structure of tetrameric phenyllithium etherate Representation of tt bonding in alkene-transition-metal complexes Mechanisms for addition of singlet and triplet carbenes to alkenes Frontier orbital interpretation of radical substituent effects Chain mechanism for radical addition reactions mediated by trialkylstannyl radicals... 

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. 

Other limitations of the reaction are related to the regioselectivity of the aryl radical addition to double bond, which is mainly determined by steric and radical delocalization effects. Thus, methyl vinyl ketone gives the best results, and lower yields are observed when bulky substituents are present in the e-position of the alkene. However, the method represents complete positional selectivity because only the g-adduct radicals give reductive arylation products whereas the a-adduct radicals add to diazonium salts, because of the different nucleophilic character of the alkyl radical adduct. ... 

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. 

Table 12.4. Substituent Effects on Radical Stability from Measurements of Bond Dissociation Energies and Theoretical Calculations of Radical Stabilization Energies...

Radicals are particularly strongly stabilized when both an electron-attracting and an electron-donating substituent are present at the radical site. This has been called mero-stabilization" or " capto-dative stabilization. This type of stabilization results from mutual reinforcement of the two substituent effects. Scheme 12.3 gives some information on the stability of this type of radical. 

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. 

M. Birkhofer, H.-D. Beckhaus, and C. Ruchardt, Substituent Effects in Radical Chemistry, Reidel, Boston, 1986. J. Fossey, D. Lefort, and J. Sorba, Free Radicab in Organic Chemistry, John Wiley Sons, Chichester, U.K., 1995. 

A clear demonstration of the relative importance of steric and resonance factors in radical additions to carbon-carbon double bonds can be found by considering the effect of (non-polar) substituents on the rate of attack of (nonpolar) radicals. Substituents on the double bond strongly retard addition at the substituted carbon while leaving the rate of addition to the other end essentially unaffected (for example, Table 1.3). This is in keeping with expectation if steric factors determine the regiospeeificity of addition, but contrary to expectation if resonance factors are dominant. 

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. 

The involvement of the diazenyl radical as an intermediate in radiolytic dediazoni-ations was demonstrated by Becker s group (Brede et al., 1979), when they identified a tetraazadiene (Ar — N2 — N2 — Ar) among the products. Substituent effects in the radiolytically induced reduction have the same sign, but are larger (p = 0.55, Packer et al., 1980) than those for the electrochemical process. 

A good correlation with ordinary Hammett a values was based on 16 well-behaved substituents, and p-SOMe conformed well to this. Various other substituents showed deviations which were attributed to enhanced + R effects. These included p-SPh and this was explained in terms of 7t(pd) bonding, which was thus taken to play no part in the effect of p-SOMe on the methyl hyperfine splitting. More recently several 4-substituted benzyl radicals of the type RSO C6H4CH2 (n — 0,1 or 2 R = Me, Ph, Tol, COMe or OMe) have been examined by ESR spectroscopy249. The ability to delocalize spin density onto the substituent decreases in general as n increases and the effect of R depends on the oxidation state of sulfur. These authors have devised a new scale of substituent effects (sigma dot... 

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