Ring opening of aziridinylmethyl and oxiranylmethyl radicals When a radical is alpha to a three-membered ring, it is common for the ring to open via β-scission (to relieve ring strain):



When the ring contains a heteroatom there are a couple of different possibilities:



Ab initio studies of these reactions1 showed that for both X = O and X = NH, the C–C cleavage was thermodynamically favoured (presumably due to stabilisation of the subsequent radical by the adjacent lone pair). For X = O, the C–C cleavage was also found to be kinetically favoured, but for X = NH, the C–N cleavage is kinetically favoured!

This regioselectivity is also backed up by experiment2 and also has potential for use in synthesis.3



Is there an explanation for why the kinetically favoured products are different for X = O and NH?



References


Pasto, D. J. Ab Initio Theoretical Studies on the Ring-Opening Modes of the Oxiranyl-, Aziridinyl-, Oxaziridinyl-, and Thiaranylmethyl Radical Systems. J. Org. Chem. 1996, 61 (1), 252–256. DOI: 10.1021/jo9505942.
Marples, B. A.; Toon, R. C. An investigation into the β-cleavage of aziridinylcarbinyl radicals. Tetrahedron Lett. 1999, 40 (26), 4873–4876. DOI: 10.1016/S0040-4039(99)00900-4.
Prévost, N.; Shipman, M. Intramolecular Radical Rearrangement Reactions of 2-Methyleneaziridines: Application to the Synthesis of Substituted Piperidines, Decahydroquinolines, and Octahydroindolizines. Org. Lett. 2001, 3 (15), 2383–2385. DOI: 10.1021/ol016194k.
The 2-methyl-3-phenyloxiranylcarbinyl radical has been shown EXPERIMENTALLY to cleave the C-O bond kinetically while the C-C bond is cleaved thermodynamically. This means that, in this example, The oxygen-centered radical forms faster than the highly stable benzyl radical. The formation of the oxygen radical is necessarily reversible. See ref. 11 in your ref. 2 (Marples paper)

Ziegler, F. E.; Petersen, A. K. Allyloxy Radicals are Formed Reversibly from Oxiranylcarbinyl Radicals: A Kinetic Study, J. Org. Chem. , 1995, 60, 2666.