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The 1,2,4,7-cyclooctatetraenyl radical (C8H7) has been synthesized for the very first time via the bimolecular gas-phase reaction of ground-state carbon atoms with 1,3,5-cycloheptatriene (C7H8) on the triplet surface under single-collision conditions. The barrier-less route to the cyclic 1,2,4,7-cyclooctatetraenyl radical accesses exotic reaction intermediates on the triplet surface, which cannot be synthesized via classical organic chemistry methods: the triplet non-aromatic 2,4,6-cyclooctatriene (C8H8) and the triplet aromatic 1,3,5,7-cyclooctatetraene (C8H8). Our approach provides a clean gas-phase synthesis of this hitherto elusive cyclic radical species 1,2,4,7-cyclooctatetraenyl via a single-collision event and opens up a versatile, unconventional path to access this previously largely obscure class of cyclooctatetraenyl radicals, which have been impossible to access through classical synthetic methods.

Carbon-rich radicals are important for understanding chemistry of flames as well as astrochemistry. However, they are elusive for both experiments and computations, due to the peculiarity of radicals. Here, we calculated excited states of the 1-buten-3-yn-2-yl (HCCCCH2 , i-C4H3 ) and n-C4H3 (HCCCHCH) radicals with the state-of-the-art complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and multi-reference configuration interaction (MRCI) methods using the 6-311 + G(3df,2p) and aTVZ basis sets. The vertical energies for the seven excited states of each of the two isomers were obtained with the MRCI method at the geometries optimized at the CASSCF/6-311G(d,p) level. The result using the aTVZ basis set has been more reliable than predicted with the 6-311 + G(3df,2p) basis set with the relative stability of the ground states of the two isomers better predicted in comparison to existing data. We believe that our results will be useful for understanding the chemistry of carbon-rich radicals.