Imido complexes actinide

The hydroamination of olefins has been shown to occur by the sequence of oxidative addition, migratory insertion, and reductive elimination in only one case. Because amines are nucleophilic, pathways are available for the additions of amines to olefins and alkynes that are unavailable for the additions of HCN, silanes, and boranes. For example, hydroaminations catalyzed by late transition metals are thought to occur in many cases by nucleophilic attack on coordinated alkenes and alkynes or by nucleophilic attack on ir-allyl, iT-benzyl, or TT-arene complexes. Hydroaminations catalyzed by lanthanide and actinide complexes occur by insertion of an olefin into a metal-amide bond. Finally, hydroamination catalyzed by dP group 4 metals have been shown to occur through imido complexes. In this case, a [2+2] cycloaddition forms the C-N bond, and protonolysis of the resulting metallacycle releases the organic product. 

Here we will discuss the first few studies of reactivity of actinide-containing complexes for early actinides elements, such as bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl) uranium(IV) and thorium(IV) complexes [5,7], and bis(imido) uranium complexes. [47] Related studies were later published in the literature, [51-53] and the reader can refer to them for further illustration. These studies further demonstrated that density functional theory is a useful tool to probe the electronic structures and reactivity of actinide complexes. 

Conceptually, there are three fundamental steps to investigate reactivity a) bringing reactant into the proximity of actinide center b) cleavage of bond in reactant c) thermodynamic stability of the newly formed An-L bond. In this section, we will illustrate the capability of characterizing these three aspects for two distinctive reaction mechanisms using hybrid density functional theory a) a-bond metathesis C-H activation by actinide complexes and b) [2+2] cycloaddition of imido reactivity. 

Only a limited number of organoactinide catalysts have been investigated for the hydroamination/cyclization of aminoalkenes (Fig. 4, Table 2) [55, 96-98]. The constrained geometry catalysts 11-An (An = Th, U) show high activity comparable to the corresponding rare earth metal complexes and can be applied for a broad range of substrates [55, 96, 97]. The ferrocene-diamido uranium complex 12 was also catalytically active for aminoalkene cyclization, but at a somewhat reduced rate [98]. Mechanistic studies suggest that the actinide-catalyzed reaction occurs via a lanthanide-like metal-amido insertion mechanism and not via an imido mechanism (as proposed for alkyne hydroaminations), because also secondary aminoalkenes can be cyclized [55, 98]. 

A number of actinide complexes have been investigated with respect to their catalytic activity in the intermolecular hydroamination of terminal alkynes with primary ahphatic and aromatic amines [98, 206-209]. Secondary amines generally do not react and the reaction is believed to proceed via an metal-imido species similar to that of group 4 metal complexes. The reaction of Cp 2UMc2 with sterically less-demanding aliphatic amines leads exclusively to the anti-Markovnikov adduct in form of the -imine (31) [207] however, sterically more demanding amines, e.g., t-BuNH2, result in exclusive alkyne dimerization. The ferrocene-diamido uranium complex 12 (Fig. 4) catalyzes the addition of aromatic amines very efficiently (32) [98]. 

---