Unimolecular electronic challenge

Due to their strain and putative electronic destabilization, such three-membered heterocycles possessing a cyclic array of 47r-electrons offer a considerable challenge to synthesis. Such molecules are expected to be both unimolecularly and bimolecularly reactive, if they exist at all as energy minima. Since no isolable tellurirenes have been reported, only some reactions of selenirenes are described in this section. Selenirene and its kindred systems, oxirene, azirine, and thiirene, are of interest because of their theoretical significance as prototypes of antiaromatic species. 

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