Alcohols from organolithium reagents

Organolithium compounds are sometimes prepared in hydrocarbon solvents such as pentane and hexane, but nonnally diethyl ether is used. It is especially important that the solvent be anhydrous. Even trace amounts of water or alcohols react with lithium to form insoluble lithium hydroxide or lithium alkoxides that coat the surface of the metal and prevent it from reacting with the alkyl halide. Furthennore, organolithium reagents are strong bases and react rapidly with even weak proton sources to fonn hydrocarbons. We shall discuss this property of organolithium reagents in Section 14.5. 

In some cases the yields were poor due to competing deprotonation of the substrate by the organolithium reagent. Deprotonation was the predominant reaction with methyllithium or when (Z)-2-(l-alkenyl)-4,5-dihydrooxazoles were employed. The stereochemical outcome has been rationalized as occurring from a chelated transition state. The starting chiral amino alcohol auxiliary can also be recovered without racemization for reuse. 

Alcohols can also be obtained from epoxides, aldehydes, ketones, esters, and acid chloride as a consequence of C-C bond formation. These reactions involve the addition of carbanion equivalents through the use of Grignard or organolithium reagents. 

Fig. 10.33. Preparation of a primary alcohol from formaldehyde and a Grignard reagent or an organolithium compound.

In the next examples, formaldehyde makes a primary alcohol from two deprotonated alkynes. The second reaction here (for which we have shown organolithium formation, reaction, and quench simply as a series of three consecutive reagents) forms one of the last steps of the synthesis of Cecropia juvenile hormone whose structure you met right at the beginning of the chapter. 

It is a tertiary alcohol with the hydroxyl group flanked by two identical R (= butyl) groups. The chemists who wanted to make the compound knew that an ester would react twice with the same organolithium reagent, so they made it from this unsaturated ester (known as methyl methacrylate) and butyllithium. 

Alcohols, aldehydes, ketones and carboxylic acids can be prepared from Grignard reagents. ArMgBr, and organolithium compounds, ArLi. by reaction with molecules with an electron-delicieni site. 

This additive reliably causes nucleophilic attack to occur from the si face of the aldehyde to generate the (5)-alcohol. The direction of addition is irrespective of the organolithium reagent used. The authors suggest Figure 19 as the conformation responsible for the selectivities observed. 

Evidence for a radical coupling mechanism (as opposed to a carbanionic carbonyl addition mechanism) in the intramolecular Smh-promoted Barbier reactions has come from studies on appropriately functionalized substrates in the 3-keto ester series. It is well known that heterosubstituents are rapidly eliminated when they are adjacent to a carbanionic center. Indeed, treatment of a 3-methoxy organic halide (suitably functionalized for cyclization ) with an organolithium reagent leads only to alkene (equation 48). No cyclized material can be detected. On the other hand, treatment of the same substrate with Sml2 provides cyclized product and a small amount of reduced alcohol, with none of the alkene detected by gas chromatographic analysis (equation 49). ... 

Development of the chemistry of the salt (156) continues. When converted into the alkoxyphosphonium salts (157) and treated with, e.g., methyl-lithium or lithium dimethylcuprate, alkylation at the alkoxy carbon to form R—Me derivatives only occurs to a small extent, due to competition from the strongly nucleophilic N-methylanilide ion. However, alkylation (and arylation) at the alkoxy carbon has been achieved by the reaction of the salt (156) with mixed cuprates derived from an allylic alcohol, copper(i) iodide, and an organolithium reagent, enabling direct substitution of the hydroxy-group of allyl alcohols by alkyl or phenyl groups in a regio- and stereo-selective manner. ... 

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