Woodward-Hoffmann rules method

Frontier orbital analysis is a powerful theory that aids our understanding of a great number of organic reactions Its early development is attributed to Professor Kenichi Fukui of Kyoto University Japan The application of frontier orbital methods to Diels-Alder reactions represents one part of what organic chemists refer to as the Woodward-Hoffmann rules a beautifully simple analysis of organic reactions by Professor R B Woodward of Harvard University and Professor Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University Professors Fukui and Hoffmann were corecipients of the 1981 Nobel Prize m chemistry for their work... 

In the present chapter, however, because the problem is considered from a retrosynthetic point of view, we will distinguish only between heterolytic and homolytic disconnections -to which we will refer to as "retro-annulations"- and concerted or "pericyclic (or cheletropic) cycloreversions". In the same way that Woodward-Hoffmann rules [2] apply to pericyclic reactions, the Baldwin rules [3] may be said to apply to heterolytic as well as to homolytic "monotopic" annulations (see Table 6.1). Although in the preceding Chapter (see 5.5) we have already described some radical "monotopic" annulations, later on in this Chapter (see 6.1.3) and mainly in Chapter 7 we will refer to some new methods, syntheses and strategies which have been developed recently. 

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... 

We have emphasized that the Diels-Alder reaction generally takes place rapidly and conveniently. In sharp contrast, the apparently similar dimerization of olefins to cyclobutanes (5-49) gives very poor results in most cases, except when photochemically induced. Fukui, Woodward, and Hoffmann have shown that these contrasting results can be explained by the principle of conservation of orbital symmetry,895 which predicts that certain reactions are allowed and others forbidden. The orbital-symmetry rules (also called the Woodward-Hoffmann rules) apply only to concerted reactions, e.g., mechanism a, and are based on the principle that reactions take place in such a way as to maintain maximum bonding throughout the course of the reaction. There are several ways of applying the orbital-symmetry principle to cycloaddition reactions, three of which are used more frequently than others.896 Of these three we will discuss two the frontier-orbital method and the Mobius-Huckel method. The third, called the correlation diagram method,897 is less convenient to apply than the other two. 

Whether for these reasons or not, the reactivity indices excited little interest among organic chemists, and it was only after Woodward and Hoffmann s early papers that perturbational methods were widely invoked again. Fukui and Fujimoto17-90 adopted Fukui s frontier orbital theory to explain the Woodward-Hoffmann rules, and both they91 and Hoffmann and Woodward92 were able to explain stereoselective effects [such as the preference in the Cope rearrangement (1) (2) for the chair-like intermediate (16) rather than the boat-like one (17), and the tendency for Diels-... 

As can be seen from the figure, the actual reaction path confirms the qualitative prediction of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules and the reaction is to be classified as concerted even if the path itself is not ideally synchronous. It is, however, interesting that despite the assynchronicity of the path the critical structure corresponding to the transition of the system from the region of the intermediate into the region of the product is quite close to the ideally symmetrical structure expected and also found by various quantum chemical methods. 

Roald Hoffmann, bom Zloczow, Poland, 1937. Ph.D. Harvard, 1962, Professor, Cornell. Nobel Prize 1981(shared with Kenichi Fukui Section 7.3.5) for work with organic chemist Robert B. Woodward, showing how the symmetry of molecular orbitals influences the course of chemical reactions (the Woodward-Hoffmann rules or the conservation of orbital symmetry). Main exponent of the extended Hiickel method. He has written poetry, and several popular books on chemistry. 

The spartan reliance of the EHM on empirical parameters helps to make it relatively easy (in the right hands) to interpret its results, which depend, in the last analysis, only on geometry (which affects overlap integrals) and ionization energies. With a strong dose of chemical intuition this has enabled the method to yield powerful insights, such as counterintuitive orbital mixing [65], and the very powerful Woodward-Hoffmann rules [38]. 

The Diels-Alder reaction and related pericyclic reactions, which can be treated qualitatively by the Woodward-Hoffmann rules (Section 4.3.5), have been reviewed in the context of computational chemistry [39]. The reaction is clearly nonionic, and the main controversy was whether it proceeds in a concerted fashion as indicated in Fig. 9.5 or through a diradical, in which one bond has formed and two unpaired electrons have yet to form the other bond. A subtler question was whether the reaction, if concerted, was synchronous or asynchronous whether both new bonds were formed to the same extent as reaction proceeded, or whether the formation of one ran ahead of the formation of the other. Using the CASSCF method (Section 5.4.3), Li and Houk [40] concluded that the butadiene-ethene reaction is concerted and synchronous, and chided Dewar and Jie [41] for stubbornly adhering to the diradical (biradical) mechanism. 

Kenichi Fukui and Roald Hoffmann won the Nobel prize in 1981 (Woodward died in 1979 and so couldn t share this prize he had already won the Nobel prize in 1965 for his work on synthesis) for the application of orbital symmetry to pericyclic reactions. Theirs is an alternative description to the frontier orbital method we have used and you need to know a little about it. They considered a more fundamental correlation between the symmetry of all the orbitals in the starting materials and all the orbitals in the products. This is rather too complex for our consideration here, and we shall concentrate only on a summary of the conclusions—the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. The most important of these states ... 

Another question posed in Chapter 1 was Why does the Diels-Alder reaction give endo adducts Whereas the Woodward-Hoffmann rules have been explained in several (related154) ways, the frontier orbital method is virtually the only one to have been used to account for secondary effects like this.155... 

It may be worthwhile mentioning that most of the arguments in the development of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules have been substantiated with the results of EH calculations 4>83). Other EH molecular orbital studies were devoted to the elucidation of the mechanism of the Wolfe rearrangement 84>, and to the investigation of the hydrolysis of acetylcholine 85>. A simplified form of the EH method has been used to determine the role of non-classical ions in 1,2 rearrangements 86>. 

Symmetry and stability analysis. The semi-empirical unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) method was used for symmetry and stability analysis of chemical reactions at early stage of our theoretical studies.1,2 The BS MOs for CT diradicals are also expanded in terms of composite donor and acceptor MOs to obtain the Mulliken CT theoretical explanations of their electronic structures. Instability in chemical bonds followed by the BS ab initio calculations is one of the useful approaches for elucidating electronic structures of active reaction intermediates and transition structures.2 The concept is also useful to characterize chemical reaction mechanisms in combination with the Woodward-Hoffman (WH) orbital symmetry criterion,3 as illustrated in Figure 1. According to the Woodward-Hoffmann rule,3 there are two types of organic reactions orbital-symmetry allowed and forbidden. On the other hand, the orbital instability condition is the other criterion for distinguishing between nonradical and diradical cases.2 The combination of the two criteria provides four different cases (i) allowed nonradical (AN), (ii) allowed radical (AR), (iii) forbidden nonradical (FN), and (iv) forbidden radical (FR). The charge and spin density populations obtained by the ab initio BS MO calculations are responsible for the above classifications as shown in Fig. 1. 

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