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Concept
Cyclobutadiene
Summary
Cyclobutadiene is an organic compound with the formula . It is very reactive owing to its tendency to dimerize. Although the parent compound has not been isolated, some substituted derivatives are robust and a single molecule of cyclobutadiene is quite stable. Since the compound degrades by a bimolecular process, the species can be observed by matrix isolation techniques at temperatures below 35 K. It is thought to adopt a rectangular structure.
The compound is the prototypical antiaromatic hydrocarbon with 4 π-electrons. It is the smallest [n]-annulene ([4]-annulene). Its rectangular structure is the result of a pseudo- (or second order) Jahn–Teller effect, which distorts the molecule and lowers its symmetry, converting the triplet to a singlet ground state. The electronic states of cyclobutadiene have been explored with a variety of computational methods. The rectangular structure is consistent with the existence of two different 1,2-dideutero-1,3-cyclobutadiene valence isomers. This distortion indicates that the pi electrons are localized, in agreement with Hückel's rule which predicts that a π-system of 4 electrons is not aromatic.
In principle, another situation is possible. Namely, cyclobutadiene could assume an undistorted square geometry, if it adopts a triplet spin state. While a theoretical possibility, the triplet form of the parent cyclobutadiene and its substituted derivatives remained elusive for decades. However, in 2017, the square triplet excited state of 1,2,3,4-tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)-1,3-cyclobutadiene was observed spectroscopically, and a singlet-triplet gap of EST = 13.9 kcal/mol (or 0.6 eV per molecule) was measured for this compound.
Several cyclobutadiene derivatives have been isolated with steric bulky substituents. Orange tetrakis (tert-butyl)cyclobutadiene arises by thermolysis of its isomer tetra-tert-butyltetrahedrane. Although the cyclobutadiene derivative is stable (with respect to dimerization), it decomposes upon contact with .
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