Posts Tagged ‘potential energy surfaces’

I’ve started so I’ll finish. The mechanism of diazo coupling to indoles – forty (three) years on!

Thursday, December 24th, 2015

The BBC TV quiz series Mastermind was first broadcast in the UK in 1972, the same time I was starting to investigate the mechanism of diazocoupling to substituted indoles as part of my Ph.D. researches. The BBC program became known for the catch phrase I've started so I'll finish; here I will try to follow this precept with the project I started then. Indole diazocoupling In 1972, one measured the rates of chemical reactions to gain insights into the transition state kinetic model. To obtain more data, we used isotopes such as 2H or 3H, together with substituents such as R-t-butyl to modify the potential energy surfaces of the reactions by inducing steric effects.[1],[2] We found that the kinetics for this reaction were actually complex (in part because of pH dependence) involving a Wheland intermediate (the formation of which is shown with red curly arrows above) followed by the collapse of this intermediate to the diazo-coupled product (blue arrows). Coupling to 2-methyl indole (R=X=H, R'=Me), 2-t-butyl indole (R=H, R'=t-butyl) and 4-methyl-2-t-butyl indole (R=Me, R'=t-butyl) revealed that the kinetic isotope effects induced by replacing H by D or T were "not apparent" (i.e. close to 1), the inference being that the rate constant k1 for those systems was slower than k2; the formation of the Wheland intermediate was rate determining (the rds) for the reaction. But with 2-methyl-4,6-di-t-butyl indole (R=t-butyl, R'=Me) this changed and a deuterium isotope effect of ~7 was observed. The rate determining proton removal from the Wheland intermediate k2 was now slower than k1. With 2,4,6-tri-t-butyl indole, we ended by noting that the reaction become almost too slow to observe and furthermore was accompanied by loss of a t-butyl cation as well as a proton. At this point we attempted to infer some transition state models consistent with these observations. Note that we had relatively little data with which to derive our 3D models (one needs to define a geometry using 3N-6 variables, along with its relative energy and force constants). The text and diagram of our attempt is shown below. TS1 The main points of this argument were;

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References

  1. B.C. Challis, and H.S. Rzepa, "The mechanism of diazo-coupling to indoles and the effect of steric hindrance on the rate-limiting step", Journal of the Chemical Society, Perkin Transactions 2, pp. 1209, 1975. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/P29750001209
  2. Rzepa, Henry S.., "Hydrogen transfer reactions of Indoles", 1974. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18777

Why is mercury a liquid at room temperatures?

Saturday, July 12th, 2014

Computational quantum chemistry has made fantastic strides in the last 30 years. Often deep insight into all sorts of questions regarding reactions and structures of molecules has become possible. But sometimes the simplest of questions can prove incredibly difficult to answer. One such is how accurately can the boiling point of water be predicted from first principles? Or its melting point? Another classic case is why mercury is a liquid at room temperatures? The answer to that question (along with another, why is gold the colour it is?) is often anecdotally attributed to Einstein. More accurately, to his special theory of relativity.[1] But finally in 2013 a computational proof of this was demonstrated for mercury.[2] The proof was built up in three stages.

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References

  1. A. Einstein, "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?", Annalen der Physik, vol. 323, pp. 639-641, 1905. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/andp.19053231314
  2. F. Calvo, E. Pahl, M. Wormit, and P. Schwerdtfeger, "Evidence for Low‐Temperature Melting of Mercury owing to Relativity", Angewandte Chemie International Edition, vol. 52, pp. 7583-7585, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201302742

The Sn2 reaction: followed up.

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

An obvious issue to follow-up my last post on the (solvated) intrinisic reaction coordinate for the Sn2 reaction is how variation of the halogen (X) impacts upon the nature of the potential.

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The first ever curly arrows. And now for something completely different.

Saturday, July 21st, 2012

The discussion appended to the post on curly arrows is continued here. Recollect the curly arrow diagram (in modern style) derived from Robinson’s original suggestion:

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