Stone-Wales Rearrangement as the Double Olefin-Carbene 1,2-CC Bond Shift. Denied Role of Triplet Biradicals

Abstract

Abstract Stone-Wales rearrangement may be considered to consist of two contiguous steps of olefin-carbene 1,2-C-C bond shift. Computational study on this mechanism led to high activation energies comparable to the bond dissociation energies of C-C bonds in fullerenes and their precursors. the possibility of passing through triplet transition state is denied on computational grounds.