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Rapid Route-Finding for Bifurcating Organic Reactions.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Lee, Sanha 
Goodman, Jonathan M  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8693-9136

Abstract

A large number of organic reactions feature post-transition-state bifurcations. Selectivities in such reactions are difficult to analyze because they cannot be determined by comparing the energies of competing transition states. Molecular dynamics approaches can provide answers but are computationally very expensive. We present an algorithm that predicts the major products in bifurcating organic reactions with negligible computational cost. The method requires two transition states, two product geometries, and no additional information. The algorithm correctly predicts the major product for about 90% of the organic reactions investigated. For the remaining 10% of the reactions, the algorithm returns a warning indication that the conclusion may be uncertain. The method also reproduces the experimental and the molecular dynamics product ratios within 15% for more than 80% of the reactions. We have successfully applied the method to a trifurcating organic reaction, a carbocation rearrangement, and solvent-dependent Pummerer-like reactions, demonstrating the power of the algorithm to simplify and to help understand highly complex reactions.

Description

Keywords

3405 Organic Chemistry, 34 Chemical Sciences, 3407 Theoretical and Computational Chemistry

Journal Title

J Am Chem Soc

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0002-7863
1520-5126

Volume Title

142

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P020259/1)
Trinity College, University of Cambridge Cambridge Service for Data Driven Discovery (CSD3) operated by the University of Cambridge Research Computing Service (www.csd3.cam.ac.uk), provided by Dell EMC and Intel using Tier-2 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (capital grant EP/P020259/1)
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