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Organic Chemistry

Reactions of Organic Compounds

What’s a sigmatropic reaction?

While a cycloaddition reaction uses two π-bonds to make two new σ-bonds, a sigmatropic reaction takes one σ-bond and makes…well…one σ-bond. One of the most well-known sigmatropic rearrangements is known as the Cope rearrangement. Using the system we talked about earlier, this reaction is classified as a [3,3]-sigmatropic reaction (the methyl substituent is not directly involved, so we don’t count it).

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