Cycloalkyne

Because of the linear nature of the C−C≡C−C alkyne unit, cycloalkynes can be highly strained and can only exist when the number of carbon atoms in the ring is great enough to provide the flexibility necessary to accommodate this geometry.

While the cyclononyne (C9H14) and cyclooctyne (C8H12) are isolable (though strongly reactive) compounds, cycloheptyne (C7H10), cyclohexyne (C6H8) and cyclopentyne (C5H6) only exist as transient reaction intermediates or as ligands coordinating to a metal center.

[4] Initial studies which demonstrated the transient intermediacy of the seven-, six- and five-membered cycloalkynes relied on trapping of the high-energy alkyne with a suitable reaction partner, such as a cyclic dienes or diazo compounds to generate the Diels–Alder or diazoalkane 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition products, respectively.

[6] Despite long being considered to be chemical curiosities with limited synthetic applications, recent work has demonstrated the utility of strained cycloalkynes in both total synthesis of complex natural products and bioorthogonal chemistry.

Due to the activated nature of the cyclic carbon–carbon triple bond, many alkyne addition-type reactions such as the Diels–Alder, 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions and halogenation may be performed using very mild conditions and in the absence of the catalysts frequently required to accelerate the transformation in a non-cyclic system.

[17] This reaction was utilized as the key step in Carreira's total synthesis of guanacastapenes O and N. It allowed for the expedient construction of the 5-7-6 ring system and provided useful synthetic handles for subsequent functionalization.

[18][19] Cyclooctyne, the smallest isolable cycloalkyne, is able to undergo azide-alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition under mild, physiological conditions in the absence of a copper(I) catalyst due to strain.