Antarafacial 1,3-sigmatropic shifts in carbonyl derivatives of ketenes, isocyanates, thioketenes and
thioisocyanates have been studied by means of ab initio MO calculations. Energy barriers in 20 different
systems have been uniformly determined at the MP4SDTQ/6-31G(d,p) level, based on MP2/6-31G(d,p)
geometries and corrected for zero-point energies. For formylketene, higher- level calculations using the
QCISD(T) method and larger basis sets [up to 6- 311++G(2df,2p)] have also been carried out. In
carbonylketenes, the migratory aptitude of the substituents R is established as follows: Cl > SH > NF2 > NH
2 > BH2 > PH2 > F > OCH3 > OH > SiH3 > H > C6H5 > CH3. The barrier heights range from 10 kcal/mol
for Cl migration to 35 kcal/mol for phenyl migration. Several factors influencing the energy barriers
including the existence of an n-electron pair at the migrating atom, its size, electronegativity and ability to
adapt to a hypervalent state, as well as the strengths of the breaking and forming bonds have been examined
in detail. Generally speaking, 1,3-sigmatropic rearrangements are feasible thermal unimolecular reactions
even under mild experimental conditions.
