Cyclization of vicinally substituted heterocyclic analogs of 3,4-bis(indol-1-yl)maleimide under the action of protic acids: a quantum chemical study

B3LYP/6-31G(d) density functional quantum chemical calculations of vicinally substituted bis(indol-1-yl)derivatives of 1,5-dihydropyrrol-2-one, furan-2,5-dione, cyclopent-4-ene-1,3-dione, cyclobut-3-ene-1,2-dione, and pyrrolidine-2,5-dione were carried out to study the effect of modification of the maleimide moiety in 3,4-bis(indol-1-yl)maleimides on the direction of intramolecular cyclization under the action of protic acids. Geometric parameters, charge distributions, energy characteristics, and frontier orbital energies of these compounds and the corresponding indoleninium cations were determined. Alternative protonation routes of 3,4-bis(indol-1-yl)-1,5-dihydropyrrol-2-one have been studied. Published in Russian in Izvestiya Akademii Nauk. Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 7, pp. 1348–1352, July, 2008.