Henry Rzepa's Blog

This is the third and final study deriving from my Ph.D.[cite]10.1039/P29750001822[/cite]. The first two topics dealt with the mechanism of heteroaromatic electrophilic attack using either a diazonium cation or a proton as electrophile, followed by either proton abstraction or carbon dioxide loss from the resulting Wheland intermediate. This final study inverts this sequence by starting with the proton abstraction from an indolinone by a base to create/aromatize to a indole-2-enolate intermediate, which only then is followed by electrophilic attack (by iodine).  Here I explore what light quantum chemical modelling might cast on the mechanism.

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