title: Kinetic and thermodynamic stability of naphthalene oxide and related compounds. A comparative microcalorimetric and computational (DFT) study.
abstract: The kinetics of the acid-catalyzed ring opening of naphthalene 1,2-oxide (5) in highly aqueous media to give naphthols has been measured by heat-flow microcalorimetry. The reaction enthalpy of this aromatization reaction was measured as DeltaH = -51.3 +/- 1.7 kcal mol(-)(1). The unexpectedly low reactivity of naphthalene oxide is suggested to be due to an unusually large thermodynamic stability. A crude estimate of the stabilization effect, approximately 1 kcal mol(-)(1)(not a significant stabilization), is obtained by using the measured reaction enthalpies of structurally related substrates as references. A larger value (2.7 kcal mol(-)(1)) was obtained by calculation using the B3LYP hybrid functional corrected with solvation energies derived from semiempirical AM1/SM2 calculations. The origin of this effect is discussed in terms of homoconjugative stabilization and homoaromaticity. There is a good linear correlation (with slope = 0.63) between the experimentally measured free energy of activation and the calculated enthalpy of carbocation formation in water.
authors.affiliation: Organic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Brandt
authors.forename: Zhi Sheng
authors.initials: ZS
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Alf
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thibblin