On the importance of hydrogen bonding in the promotion of Diels-Alder reactions of unactivated aldehydes: a computational study

The kinetic solvent effects on the Diels-Alder (DA) reaction of N,N-dimethylamino-3-trimethylsilyl butadiene with p-anisaldehyde are studied by density functional calculations at the B3LYP/6-31C(d) level of theory. Experimentally, it has been found that the acceleration of this reaction is not due to the increase of the polarity of the solvent but it is rather due to hydrogen bonding (HB). Intrinsic reaction coordinate calculations combined with electron localisation function analysis show that this reaction follows a one-step two-stage mechanism with a highly asynchronous sigma bond formation process. The calculations, performed using an explicit solvent model based on the coordination of the carbonyl group with one molecule of the solvent, show a considerable decrease of the activation energy when going from the gas phase (E = 1) to solution phase and this diminution is found to be more important in isopropyl alcohol (E = 18.3) in comparison with acetonitrile (E = 37.5). Our calculations also show that the acceleration of this DA reaction is due to the increase of the electrophilicity power of the solvated carbonyl compound and consequently the increase of the polarity of the reaction in the presence of protic solvents. The obtained results put in evidence the relevance of HB in the promotion of DA reactions of unactivated ketones as experimentally expected.