Deciphering Selectivity in Organic Reactions: A Multifaceted Problem

Computational chemistry has made a sustained contribution to the understanding of chemical reactions. In earlier times, half a century ago, the goal was to distinguish allowed from forbidden reactions (e.g., Woodward-Hoffmann rules), that is, reactions with low or high to very high activation barriers. A great achievement of computational chemistry was also to contribute to the determination of structures with the bonus of proposing a rationalization (e.g., anomeric effect, isolobal analogy, Gillespie valence shell pair electron repulsion rules and counter examples, Wade-Mingos rules for molecular clusters). With the development of new methods and the constant increase in computing power, computational chemists move to more challenging problems, close to the daily concerns of the experimental chemists, in determining the factors that make a reaction both efficient and selective: a key issue in organic synthesis. For this purpose, experimental chemists use advanced synthetic and analytical techniques to which computational chemists added other ways of determining reaction pathways. The transition states and intermediates contributing to the transformation of reactants into the desired and undesired products can now be determined, including their geometries, energies, charges, spin densities, spectroscopy properties, etc. Such studies remain challenging due to the large number of chemical species commonly present in the reactive media whose role may have to be determined: Calculating chemical systems as they are in the experiment is not always possible, bringing its own share of complexity through the large number of atoms and the associated large number of conformers to consider. Modeling the chemical species with smaller systems is an alternative that historically led to artifacts. Another important topic is the choice of the computational method. While DFT is widely used, the vast diversity of functionals available is both an opportunity and a challenge. Though chemical knowledge helps, the relevant computational method is best chosen in conjunction with the nature of the experimental systems and many studies have been concerned with this topic. We will not address this aspect but give references in the text. Usually, a computational study starts with the validation of the method by means of benchmark calculations vs accurate experimental data or state-of-the-art calculations. Finally, computational chemists can bring more than the sole determination of the reaction pathways through the analysis of the electronic structure. In our case, we have privileged the NBO analysis, which has the advantage of describing interactions on the basis of terms and concepts that are shared within the chemical community. In this Account, we have chosen to select representative reactions from our own work to highlight the diversity of situations than can be addressed nowadays. These include selective activation of C(sp(3))-H bonds, selective reactions with low energy barriers, involving closed shell or radical species, the role of noncovalent interactions, and the importance of considering side reactions.