Effect of Intramolecular Paternò-Büchi Reaction on the Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Nearly Degenerate [3,3]-Sigmatropic Shift in Fluxional Polycycles

In reactions with weak dienophiles, cyclooctatetraene (COT) often yields 2:1 adducts possessing the fluxional bicyclo[5.1.0]octadiene moiety. They undergo fast, nearly degenerate Cope rearrangement with an activation barrier similar to that of the parent dihydrobullvalene. Irradiation to excite the carbonyl moiety induces an intramolecular Paterno-Buchi cyclization yielding endo-oxetanes and significantly changing the Cope-averaged NMR spectra. In this paper we examine the effect of skeletal distortion caused by intramolecular [2 + 2]-photoaddition on thermodynamics and the activation barrier of the [3,3]-sigmatropic tautomerism. Our finding is that such a distortion lifts the energetic degeneracy of the two valence tautomers, while not affecting the activation barrier.