Photochemical Reactions of Mesityl Azide with Tetracyanoethylene: Competitive Trapping of Singlet Nitrene and Didehydroazepine

Irradiation of the title azide 4 in the presence of TCNE gives a mixture of two stable adducts. One of them is identified as the azomethine ylide 5, the structure of which is strictly determined by X-ray crystallography. The other is spectroscopically assigned to the spiroazepine 6. The effect of wavelength of the light employed in the photolysis reveals that the TCNE-4 charge-transfer complex (lambda(max) 454 and 550 nm in dichloromethane) does not participate in the adduct formation. The ratio of the adducts obtained in the photolysis is dependent linearly upon the initial concentration of TCNE, which strongly suggests that the adducts 5 and 6 are produced by competitive trapping of singlet mesitylnitrene (8S) and trimethyldidehydroazepine (9), respectively. The rate constant for the reaction of 8S with TCNE is estimated to be on the order of 10(9) M(-)(1) s(-)(1) or greater. The PM3 calculation indicates that the azomethine ylide 5 is thermodynamically more stable than the aziridine 7, which is thought to be initially formed by the reaction of 8S with TCNE. Thus, we propose that these findings make the first example of competitive trapping of singlet arylnitrene and its ring-expanded isomer with an alkene, which definitely reveals the intervention of singlet nitrene in the photolysis of an aryl azide.