Perpustakaan Digital ITB

The concept of pericyclic reactions and the explanation of their specificity through orbital symmetries introduced a new way of understanding reactions and looking for new ones. One of the 1965 Woodward?Hoffmann communications described “the (as yet unobserved) symmetry-allowed 6 + 4 combination”, the prediction of a new field of “higher-order” cycloadditions, involving more than six electrons. Later these authors predicted exo-stereoselectivity for the [6 + 4]-cycloaddition. Chemists rushed to test this prediction (for the most part successfully). For more than half a century, chemists have hunted for additional higher-order cycloadditions. The application of catalysis within organic chemistry allows the accomplishment of previously unattainable reactions, including higherorder cycloadditions...