SummaryStructural aspects of planoid deformation of tetracoordinate carbon atom, particularly those in annulenes with central carbon atom are discussed. [ 12lAnnulene 11 with central carbon atom is proposed as compound with strong planoid deformation around the internal carbon centre. The synthesis of a saturated precursor 15 is described.The theory of Van't Hoffand Le Be1 requires 4 equal ligands of a tetracoordinate carbon atom to be arranged as a tetrahedron [ l ] [2]. Although the tenet is basic to organic chemistry, no test has been made of how far planoid deformation without bond breaking is possible. Experimental evidence has shown that racemization of chiral carbon compounds does not occur without breaking a bond 131.The bonding and energetic situation of tetracoordinate tetrahedral as well as of planar carbon atom has been discussed extensively [4] [5]. In tetrahedrally coordinated carbon compounds the bonds can be described as being formed from one 2s and three 2 p orbitals and an appropriate linear combination of ligand orbitals, giving rise to 4 bonding molecular orbitals, each occupied by 2 electrons, and 4 antibonding ones. For planar coordination the central carbon atom can only use one 2s and two 2 p atomic orbitals for a-bonding to the 4 ligands giving rise to 3 orbitals. occupied by 6 electrons. The orthogonal nonbonding 2p orbital is occupied by the remaining 2 electrons (Fig. I ) .According to this bonding model, the difference in stability between the tetrahedral and the planar configuration is mainly due to the increasing energy of one of the 3 degenerate (T,) MO's, which is correlated with the 2p-A0 of A,,-symmetry in the square planar form. This suggests in terms of average C-H bond energies that the planar arrangement should be roughly 80-100 kcal/mol less stable than tetrahedrally coordinated carbon atom. It is thus not too surprising that autoracemization without bond breaking has not been observed.
I)