Arenes and Alkanes

To expand the range of products available by solid-phase synthesis, a series of strategies have been developed that enable the generation of C-H and C-C bonds upon cleavage from a support, and in this way enable the preparation of unfunctionalized hydrocarbons. These linkers are sometimes called traceless linkers, because in some types of product the attachment point to the support can no longer be located. 

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Ruthenium complexes are capable of catalyzing halogen atom transfer reactions to olefins. This has been illustrated in the enantioselective atom transfer reactions of alkane and arene-sulfonyl chlorides and bro-motrichloromethanes to olefins using chiral ruthenium complexes. Moderate ee s up to 40% can be achieved for these transformations [74-77]. These specific reactions are believed to follow a radical redox transfer chain process. 

For each case we will also present catalytic analogues, namely (1) the activation of methane to form methanol with platinum, the reaction of certain aromatics with palladium to give alkene-substituted aromatics, and (2) the alkylation of aromatics with ruthenium catalysts, and the borylation of alkanes and arenes with a variety of metal complexes. 

These findings have stimulated enormously the search for intermolecular activation of C-H bonds, in particular those of unsubstituted arenes and alkanes. In 1982 Bergman [2] and Graham [3] reported on the reaction of well-defined complexes with alkanes and arenes in a controlled manner. It was realised that the oxidative addition of alkanes to electron-rich metal complexes could be thermodynamically forbidden as the loss of a ligand and rupture of the C-H bond might be as much as 480 kl.mol, and the gain in M-H and M-C... 

Many related complexes of iridium and rhodium undergo the oxidative addition reaction of alkanes and arenes [1]. Alkane C-H bond oxidative addition and the reverse reaction is supposed to proceed via the intermediacy of c-alkane metal complexes [4], which might involve several bonding modes, as shown in Figure 19.5 (for an arene the favoured bonding mode is r 2 via the K-electrons). 

Inter- and intramolecular (cyclometallation) reactions of this type have been ob-.served, for instance, with titanium [408,505,683-685], hafnium [411], tantalum [426,686,687], tungsten [418,542], and ruthenium complexes [688], Not only carbene complexes but also imido complexes L M=NR of, e.g., zirconium [689,690], vanadium [691], tantalum [692], or tungsten [693] undergo C-H insertion with unactivated alkanes and arenes. Some illustrative examples are sketched in Figure 3.37. No applications in organic synthesis have yet been found for these mechanistically interesting processes. 

The involvement of transition metal peroxo species in the oxidative functionalization of alkanes and arenes has been postulated for several metals with both hydrogen peroxide and alkyl hydroperoxides. 

Analogous substitution reactions take place with alkane- and arene-thiolate anions <73JCS(P1)16S9), and pyridine-2- and -4-thiones are usually prepared by use of sodium or potassium hydrogen sulfide or thiourea (74JCS(P1)2300). 

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