Organic chemistry of graphene: the Diels-Alder reaction

Herein, by using dispersion-corrected density functional theory, we investigated the Diels-Alder chemistry of pristine and defective graphene. Three dienes were considered, namely 2,3-dimethoxy-1,3-butadiene (DMBD), 9-methylanthracene (9MA), and 9,10-dimethylanthracene (910DMA). The dienophiles that were assayed were tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) and maleic anhydride (MA). When pristine graphene acted as the dienophile, we found that the cycloaddition products were 47-63 kcal mol(-1) less stable than the reactants, thus making the reaction very difficult. The presence of Stone-Wales translocations, 585 double vacancies, or 555-777 reconstructed double vacancies did not significantly improve the reactivity because the cycloaddition products were still located at higher energy than the reactants. However, for the addition of 910DMA to single vacancies, the product showed comparable stability to the separated reactants, whereas for unsaturated armchair edges the reaction was extremely favorable. With regards the reactions with dienophiles, for TCNE, the cycloaddition product was metastable. In the case of MA, we observed a reaction product that was less stable than the reactants by 50 kcal mol(-1) . For the reactions between graphene as a diene and the dienophiles, we found that the most-promising defects were single vacancies and unsaturated armchair edges, because the other three defects were much-less reactive. Thus, we conclude that the reactions with these above-mentioned dienes may proceed on pristine or defective sheets with heating, despite being endergonic. The same statement also applies to the dienophile maleic anhydride. However, for TCNE, the reaction is only likely to occur onto single vacancies or unsaturated armchair edges. We conclude that the dienophile character of graphene is slightly stronger than its behavior as a diene.