Recently a general synthetic route to trishomobenzene has been established,and some interesting properties which may arise from the strained character of the molecule reported"]. Particular interest attaches to changes in geometry of the central cyclohexane ring when annelated to three strained small rings. We have established the structure of the molecule by X-ray analysis of 9-cyano-3,6-dioxatetracyclo[6.1 .0.O2.'.Os.']nonane ( 1 )['I. As far as we know, this is the first structural report on the tris-o-homobenzene system.( 1)
H HCompound ( I ) crystallizes in the monocyclic space group P2,/c with a=6.501, b= 13.215, c=8.795A; p = 115.74'; Z = 4 : D r x p = 1.45g/cm3, D,,,,= 1.46g/cm3. A single crystal (0.2 x 0.2 x 0.25 mm) was examined with Rigaku automatically controlled four circle X-ray diffractometer; a total of 1289 reflections (within 28=55 ) were measured using M O K~ radiation. The structure was solved by a direct method and the parameters were refined by a block-diagonal least-squares method. After several refinements, all the hydrogen atoms were found from a difference Fourier synthesis. Further anisotropic least-squares refinement (C, 0, N) and simultaneous isotropic least-squares refinement (H) gave an R-factor of 0.048.The most important geometrical data are shown in Figure 1. As expected, the cyclohexane ring of ( I ) has a planar conformation: the maximum deviation from the plane through C' to C6 is only 0.008A. The dihedral angle between this plane and the cyclopropane ring (75.8") is similar to those in anti-bromobishomoquinone (75-77')r3] and 2,5-dimethyl-7,7-dicyanonorcaradiene (73")C4]. The oxirane rings inclined in the opposite direction exhibit comparable dihedral angles (75.2" for C3C401 and 74.9' for C5C60').The influence of the "unsaturated character" of the threemembered ring on the bond length warrants atteation: The C'-Ch, C2-C3, and C4-C5 bonds (av. 1.480A) ade significantly shorter than sp3-sp3 single bonds (1.54 A), and close to sp'-spz single bonds (1.48 A). This would indicate that multi-conjugated interactions occur between three-membered rings, as assumed between cyclopropane rings and double bondst3-'I.A planar six-membered ring results in expansion of the "intracyclic" bond angles (120,), thus leading to a tilting Several years ago we reported the preparation of (diethylcarbamoy1)lithiurn ( 2 b ) by cleavage of bis(diethy1carba-moy1)mercury ( 3 ) with butyllithium['. '1. With carbonyl compounds, (2 h ) affords, after hydrolysis, a-hydroxy N,Ndiethylcarboxyamides and is thus a reagent that makes it possible to introduce the carbamoyl group into carbonyl compounds[', 31. The preparation of ( 3 ) is, however, rather troublesome[41 and not without danger, so we sought a simpler access to reagents of type (?)L51.