Modeling a halogen dance reaction mechanism: A density functional theory study

Since the discovery of the halogen dance (HD) reaction more than 60 years ago, numerous insights into the mechanism have been unveiled. To date however, the reaction has not been investigated from a theoretical perspective. Density functional theory (DFT) was used to model the potential energy surface linking the starting reagents to the lithiated products for each step in the mechanism using a thiophene substrate. It was found that the lithium-halogen exchange mechanism is critical to understand the HD mechanism in detail and yielded the knowledge that SN2 transition states (TS) are favored over the four-center type for the lithium-bromine exchange steps. The overall driving force for the HD is thermodynamics, while the kinetic factors tightly control the reaction path through temperature. The SN2 lithium-bromide TS are barrierless, except the second, which is the limiting step. Finally, the model for the HD is discovered to be a pseudo-clock type, due to a highly favorable bromide catalysis step and the reformation of 2-bromothiophene.