Mechanism of the oligomerization of thiophene-based para-quinodimethanes

摘要

For the last decade, the Trahanovsky research group has focused on the study of various reactive molecules such as o-quinodimethanes (o-QDM's) and p-quinodimethanes (p-QDM's) derived from benzene, furan, and thiophene. These types of molecules are reactive and dimerize or polymerize at room temperature. One of the group's interests is to understand the dimerization mechanism of these molecules. Paper 1 describes the preparation and dimerization product analyses of 2-ethylidene-5-methylene-2,5-dihydrothiophene. Insights provided by these results into the mechanism of the dimerization of 2,5-dimethylene-2,5-dihydrothiophene are discussed. In paper 2, a convenient synthesis of cyclooctadecane is presented.