• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.948-952
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• 1999

Electrophilic substitutions on β-position of 2,5-dimethyl pyrrole have been investigated theoretically. The electron donating methyl groups enrich electron densities on C-3, C-4 positions and π* interactions with methyl groups substituted on C-2 and C-5 positions pushed up the HOMO level of the pyrroles consequently induce rapid substitutions on C-3, C-4 sites. Substitution of phenylsulfonyl group on nitrogen stabilized LUMO levels through weak π bonding interactions. Unexpected deoxidation reaction underwent on the sulfonyl group substituted at C-3 position. The structures were solved by X-ray crystallography. Meanwhile, gas phase HF/6-31G* and density functional method (B3LYP/6-31G*) calculations gave favorable energies for 1-phenylsulfinyl pyrrole (6) over 3-phenylsulfinyl pyrrole (5) by 3.6-4.7 kcal/mol which is contrary to the experimental result. However the methods involve the effects of molecular polarizability and solvent, molecular dynamics (MD) and ab-initio self consistent reaction field (SCRF) calculations showed same trend as experiments. According to MD calculations, compound 5 is more stable than compound 6 by 4.15 kcal/mol and the SCRF, HF/6-31G* calculations gave more stable energy value for structure 5 than 6 by 0.03 kcal/mol.