M. Waroquier

The radicals obtained in trehalose dihydrate single crystals after 77 K X-irradiation have been investigated at the same temperature using X-band electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR), and ENDOR-induced EPR (EIE) techniques. Five proton hyperfine coupling tensors were unambiguously determined from the ENDOR measurements and assigned to three carbon-centered radical species (T1, T1*, and T2) based on the EIE spectra. EPR angular variations revealed the presence of four additional alkoxy radical species (T3 to T6) and allowed determination of their g tensors. Using periodic density functional theory (DFT) calculations, T1/T1*, T2, and T3 were identified as H-loss species centered at C4, C1′, and O2′, respectively. The T4 radical is proposed to have the unpaired electron at O4, but considerable discrepancies between experimental and calculated HFC values indicate it is not simply the (net) H-loss species. No suitable models were found for T5 and T6. These exhibit a markedly larger g anisotropy than T3 and T4, which were not reproduced by any of our DFT calculations.

The epoxidation reaction of cyclohexene is investigated for the catalytic system vanadyl acetylacetonate (VO(acac)2) with tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) as oxidant with the aim to identify the most active species for epoxidation and to retrieve insight into the most plausible epoxidation mechanism. The reaction mixture is composed of various inactive and active complexes in which vanadium may either have oxidation state +IV or +V. Inactive species are activated with TBHP to form active complexes. After reaction with cyclohexene, each active species transforms back into an inactive complex that may be reactivated again. The reaction mixture is quite complex containing hydroxyl, acetyl acetonate, acetate, or a tert-butoxide anion as ligands, and thus, various ligand exchange reactions may occur among active and inactive complexes. Also, radical decomposition reactions allow transforming V+IV to V+V species. To obtain insight into the most abundant active complexes, each of previous transformation steps has been modeled through thermodynamic equilibrium steps. To unravel the nature of the most plausible epoxidation mechanism, first principle chemical kinetics calculations have been performed on all proposed epoxidation pathways. Our results allow to conclude that the concerted Sharpless mechanism is the preferred reaction mechanism and that alkylperoxo species V+IVO(L)(OOtBu) and V+VO(L1)(L2)(OOtBu) species are most abundant. At the onset of the catalytic cycle, vanadium +IV species may play an active role, but as the reaction proceeds, reaction mechanisms that involve vanadium +V species are preferred as the acetyl acetonate is readily oxidized. Additionally, an experimental IR and kinetic study has been performed to give a qualitative composition of the reaction mixture and to obtain experimental kinetic data for comparison with our theoretical values. The agreement between theory and experiment is satisfactory.

The reactivity of 2-bromomethyl-2-methylaziridines toward oxygen, sulfur, and carbon nucleophiles in different solvent systems was investigated. Remarkably, the choice of the solvent has a profound influence on the reaction outcome, enabling the selective formation of either functionalized aziridines in dimethylformamide (through direct bromide displacement) or azetidines in acetonitrile (through rearrangement via a bicyclic aziridinium intermediate). In addition, the experimentally observed solvent-dependent behavior of 2-bromomethyl-2-methylaziridines was further supported by means of DFT calculations.