ADDITIONS OF CYCLOPENTADIENE TO A DISSYMMETRIC MALEIC-ANHYDRIDE - SEMIEMPIRICAL CALCULATIONS OF THEIR THERMODYNAMICS AND KINETICS

There are four conceivable products of the title addition, however onl y two of them have been prepared. MNDO, AM1, and PM3 quantum-chemical computations have been used in order to rationalize the observation. A ctivated complexes have been computed for the four possible additions and it was found that one C-C bond rather than two is created on the p ath from the reactants to the activated complex (the C-C bond varies b etween 1.70 and 1.87 Angstrom). Only one activated complex has been lo calized on each reaction path. The two types of products observed in e xperiment are computed to be both thermodynamically more stable and ki netically more feasible, and hence the computations agree with the obs ervations.