Solving the puzzling competition of the thermal C²–C⁶ vs Myers–Saito cyclization of enyne-carbodiimides

• Anup Rana,
• Mehmet Emin Cinar,
• Debabrata Samanta and
• Michael Schmittel

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2016, 12, 43–49, doi:10.3762/bjoc.12.6

• Anup Rana Mehmet Emin Cinar Debabrata Samanta Michael Schmittel Department of Chemistry and Biology, Universität Siegen, Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2, D-57068 Siegen, Germany 10.3762/bjoc.12.6 Abstract The mechanism of the thermal cyclization of enyne-carbodiimides 7a–c has been studied computationally

• by applying the DFT method. The results indicate that enyne-carbodiimides preferentially follow the C2–C6 (Schmittel) cyclization pathway in a concerted fashion although the Myers–Saito diradical formation is kinetically preferred. The experimentally verified preference of the C2–C6 over the Myers

• pathway if the trapping reaction by hydrogen transfer is no more rate determining. Keywords: DFT computation; diradical; enyne-carbodiimides; hydrogen transfer; thermal cyclization; Introduction The thermal cyclizations of enediynes [1][2][3][4][5][6], enediallenes [7][8][9][10], bisallenes [11], enyne