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Concept
Möbius aromaticity
Summary
In organic chemistry, Möbius aromaticity is a special type of aromaticity believed to exist in a number of organic molecules. In terms of molecular orbital theory these compounds have in common a monocyclic array of molecular orbitals in which there is an odd number of out-of-phase overlaps, the opposite pattern compared to the aromatic character to Hückel systems. The nodal plane of the orbitals, viewed as a ribbon, is a Möbius strip, rather than a cylinder, hence the name. The pattern of orbital energies is given by a rotated Frost circle (with the edge of the polygon on the bottom instead of a vertex), so systems with 4n electrons are aromatic, while those with 4n + 2 electrons are anti-aromatic/non-aromatic. Due to incrementally twisted nature of the orbitals of a Möbius aromatic system, stable Möbius aromatic molecules need to contain at least 8 electrons, although 4 electron Möbius aromatic transition states are well known in the context of the Dewar-Zimmerman framework for pericyclic reactions. Möbius molecular systems were considered in 1964 by Edgar Heilbronner by application of the Hückel method, but the first such isolable compound was not synthesized until 2003 by the group of Rainer Herges. However, the fleeting trans-C9H9+ cation, one conformation of which is shown on the right, was proposed to be a Möbius aromatic reactive intermediate in 1998 based on computational and experimental evidence.
The Herges compound (6 in the image below) was synthesized in several photochemical cycloaddition reactions from tetradehydrodianthracene 1 and the ladderane syn-tricyclooctadiene 2 as a substitute for cyclooctatetraene.
Intermediate 5 was a mixture of 2 isomers and the final product 6 a mixture of 5 isomers with different cis and trans configurations. One of them was found to have a C2 molecular symmetry corresponding to a Möbius aromatic and another Hückel isomer was found with Cs symmetry. Despite having 16 electrons in its pi system (making it a 4n antiaromatic compound) the Heilbronner prediction was borne out because according to Herges the Möbius compound was found to have aromatic properties.
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