Iminocyclohexadienylidenes: Carbenes or Diradicals? The Hetero-Wolff Rearrangement of Benzotriazoles to Cyanocyclopentadienes and 1H-Benzo[b]azirines.

The thermal rearrangements of benzotriazole 1 to fulvenimine 4 and 1H-benzazirine 7 are investigated at DFT and CASPT2 levels of theory. Ring opening of benzotriazole 1 to 2-diazo-cyclohexadienimine 2 followed by N2 elimination affords Z- and E-2-iminocyclohexadienylidenes 3, which have triplet ground states (3A″). The open-shell singlet (OSS) (1A″) and closed-shell singlet (CSS) (1A') of 3 lie ∼15 and 40 kcal/mol higher in free energy, respectively. The OSS 3 (1A″) is best described as a 1,3-diradical, whereas the CSS (1A') has the character of a carbene. A hetero-Wolff rearrangement of OSS 3 yields fulvenimine 4, which is a precursor of cyanocyclopentadiene 5, with a calculated activation barrier of 38 kcal/mol at the CASPT2(8,8) level, whereby there is a surface crossing from the OSS to the CSS near the transition state. The barrier for cyclization to 1H-benzo[b]azirine 7 is only ∼13 kcal/mol. Therefore, reaction paths involving the singlet iminocyclohexadienylidene diradicals 3 will necessarily cause equilibration with 1H-benzazirine 7 prior to ring contraction to iminofulvene 4 and cyanocyclopentadiene 5, in agreement with experimental observations based on 13C labeling. The thermolysis of 1-acetylbenzotriazole 7 leads to the analogous N-acetyl-diazocyclohexadienimines 8, N-acetyliminocyclohexadienylidene diradicals 9, and N-acetylfulvenimine 10. The E-N-acetyliminocyclohexadienylidene E9 ring closes to the N-acetyl-1H-benzazirine 11 prior to ring contraction to N-acetylfulvenimine 10, and the Z-N-acetyl-2-diazocyclohexadienimine Z8 ring closes to 2-methylbenzoxazole 12. 1H-benzazirines are predicted to be spectroscopically observable species.