Persistent Organic High‐Spin Trinitrenes

The septet ground state trinitrenes 1,3,5‐trichloro‐2,4,6‐trinitrenobenzene and 1,3,5‐tribromo‐2,4,6‐trinitrenobenzene were isolated in inert (Ar, Ne, and Xe) as well as reactive matrices (H₂, O₂, and H₂O) at cryogenic temperatures. These trinitrenes were obtained in high yields by UV photolysis of the corresponding triazides and characterized by IR and UV/Vis spectroscopy. The trinitrenes, despite bearing six unpaired electrons, are remarkably unreactive towards molecular oxygen and hydrogen and are persistent in water ice up to 160 K where the water matrix starts to sublime off.     

Fast Heavy‐Atom Tunneling in Trifluoroacetyl Nitrene

Chemical reactions involving quantum mechanical tunneling (QMT) increasingly attract the attention of scientists. In contrast to the hydrogen‐tunneling as frequently observed in chemistry and biology, tunneling solely by heavy atoms is rare. Herein, we report heavy‐atom tunneling in trifluoroacetyl nitrene, CF₃C(O)N. The carbonyl nitrene CF₃C(O)N in the triplet ground state was generated in cryogenic matrices by laser (193 or 266 nm) photolysis of CF₃C(O)N₃ and characterized by IR and EPR spectroscopy. In contrast to the theoretically predicted activation barriers (>10 kcal mol⁻¹), CF₃C(O)N undergoes rapid rearrangement into CF₃NCO with half‐life times of less than 10 min and unprecedentedly large ¹⁴N/¹⁵N kinetic isotope effects (1.18–1.33) in solid Ar, Ne, and N₂ matrices even at 2.8 K. The tunneling disappearance of CF₃C(O)N becomes much slower in the chemically active toluene and in 2‐methyltetrahydrofuran at 5 K.     

The Cope Rearrangement of 1,5‐Dimethylsemibullvalene‐2(4)‐d1: Experimental Evidence for Heavy‐Atom Tunneling

As an experimental test of the theoretical prediction that heavy‐atom tunneling is involved in the degenerate Cope rearrangement of semibullvalenes at cryogenic temperatures, monodeuterated 1,5‐dimethylsemibullvalene isotopomers were prepared and investigated by IR spectroscopy using the matrix isolation technique. As predicted, the less thermodynamically stable isotopomer rearranges at cryogenic temperatures in the dark to the more stable one, while broadband IR irradiation above 2000 cm⁻¹ results in an equilibration of the isotopomeric ratio. Since this reaction proceeds with a rate constant in the order of 10⁻⁴ s⁻¹ despite an experimental barrier of E_a=4.8 kcal mol⁻¹ and with only a shallow temperature dependence, the results are interpreted in terms of heavy‐atom tunneling.