Electrophile affinity and positional selectivity in electrophilic substitution reactions of N-substituted pyrroles

In terms of the density functional theory (DFT) using B3LYP/6-31G(d) method with full geometry optimization, gas-phase quantum chemical calculations were performed for ??-complexes formed upon the attack of electrophiles E (E = H⁺, Me⁺, Me³Si⁺, Br⁺, NO₂ ⁺, MeCO⁺, SO₃) on ??- and ??-positions of furan, thiophene, selenophene, pyrrole, and N-substituted pyrroles (NR-pyrroles, R = Me, Bu^t, SiMe₃, SiPrⁱ ₃, C₆H₄NO₂-p, SO₂Ph, CHO, COOMe) and for respective ??- and ??-substituted electrophilic substitution products. The energy differences between the ??- and ??-isomers of the ??-complexes characterize the preferred direction of the electrophilic attack, while the energy differences between the isomeric products make it possible to estimate the energy preference of a particular product. An analysis of the results obtained demonstrates the effect of the structure of heterocycle, the nature of electrophile, and thermodynamic and steric factors on the positional selectivity (??/?? ratio) in electrophilic substitution reactions of ??-electron rich five-membered heteroaromatics.