Alkenes uncatalyzed

It is possible to prepare 1-acetoxy-4-chloro-2-alkenes from conjugated dienes with high selectivity. In the presence of stoichiometric amounts of LiOAc and LiCl, l-acetoxy-4-chloro-2-hutene (358) is obtained from butadiene[307], and cw-l-acetoxy-4-chloro-2-cyclohexene (360) is obtained from 1.3-cyclohexa-diene with 99% selectivity[308]. Neither the 1.4-dichloride nor 1.4-diacetate is formed. Good stereocontrol is also observed with acyclic diene.s[309]. The chloride and acetoxy groups have different reactivities. The Pd-catalyzed selective displacement of the chloride in 358 with diethylamine gives 359 without attacking allylic acetate, and the chloride in 360 is displaced with malonate with retention of the stereochemistry to give 361, while the uncatalyzed reaction affords the inversion product 362. 

The uncatalyzed addition of hydrogen to an alkene although exothermic is very slow The rate of hydrogenation increases dramatically however m the presence of cer tain finely divided metal catalysts Platinum is the hydrogenation catalyst most often used although palladium nickel and rhodium are also effective Metal catalyzed addi tion of hydrogen is normally rapid at room temperature and the alkane is produced m high yield usually as the only product... 

There are three main criteria for design of this catalytic system. First, the additive must accelerate the cyclopropanation at a rate which is significantly greater than the background. If the additive is to be used in substoichiometric quantities, then the ratio of catalyzed to uncatalyzed rates must be greater than 50 1 for practical levels of enantio-induction. Second, the additive must create well defined complexes which provide an effective asymmetric environment to distinguish the enantiotopic faces of the alkene. The ability to easily modulate the steric and electronic nature of the additive is an obvious prerequisite. Third, the additive must not bind the adduct or the product too strongly to interfere with turnover. 

Nitrones are a rather polarized 1,3-dipoles so that the transition structure of their cydoaddition reactions to alkenes activated by an electron-withdrawing substituent would involve some asynchronous nature with respect to the newly forming bonds, especially so in the Lewis acid-catalyzed reactions. Therefore, the transition structures for the catalyzed nitrone cydoaddition reactions were estimated on the basis of ab-initio calculations using the 3-21G basis set. A model reaction indudes the interaction between CH2=NH(0) and acrolein in the presence or absence of BH3 as an acid catalyst (Scheme 7.30). Both the catalyzed and uncatalyzed reactions have only one transition state in each case, indicating that the reactions are both concerted. However, the synchronous nature between the newly forming 01-C5 and C3-C4 bonds in the transition structure TS-J of the catalyzed reaction is rather different from that in the uncatalyzed reaction TS-K. For example, the bond lengths and bond orders in the uncatalyzed reaction are 1.93 A and 0.37 for the 01-C5 bond and 2.47 A and 0.19 for the C3-C4 bond, while those in... 

The other catalytic approach to the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction is the inverse electron-demand (Fig. 8.17, right), in which the nitrone is coordinated to the Lewis acid, which for the reaction in Scheme 8.7 was found to be deactivated compared to the uncatalyzed reaction. In order for a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition to proceed under these restrictions the alkene should be substituted with electron-donating substituents. 

The theoretical investigations of Lewis acid-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions are also very limited and only papers dealing with cycloaddition reactions of nitrones with alkenes have been investigated. The Influence of the Lewis acid catalyst on these reactions are very similar to what has been calculated for the carbo- and hetero-Diels-Alder reactions. The FMOs are perturbed by the coordination of the substrate to the Lewis acid giving a more favorable reaction with a lower transition-state energy. Furthermore, a more asynchronous transition-structure for the cycloaddition step, compared to the uncatalyzed reaction, has also been found for this class of reactions. 

Nafion-H (144), a perfluorinated resin-sulfonic acid, is an efficient Bronsted-acid catalyst which has two advantages it requires only catalytic amounts since it forms reversible complexes, and it avoids the destruction and separation of the catalyst upon completion of the reaction [94], Thus in the presence of Nafion-H, 1,4-benzoquinone and isoprene give the Diels-Alder adduct in 80% yield at 25 °C, and 1,3-cyclohexadiene reacts with acrolein at 25 °C affording 88 % of cycloadduct after 40 h, while the uncatalyzed reactions give very low yields after boiling for 1 h or at 100 °C for 3.5 h respectively [95], Other examples are given in Table 4.24. In the acid-catalyzed reactions that use highly reactive dienes such as isoprene and 2,3-dimethylbutadiene, polymerization of alkenes usually occurs with Nafion-H, no polymerization was observed. 

As we have indicated with our arrows, the mechanism of the uncatalyzed Cope rearrangement is a simple six-centered pericyclic process. Since the mechanism is so simple, it has been possible to study some rather subtle points, among them the question of whether the six-membered transition state is in the boat or the chair form. ° For the case of 3,4-dimethyl-l,5-hexadiene it was demonstrated conclusively that the transition state is in the chair form. This was shown by the stereospecific nature of the reaction The meso isomer gave the cis-trans product, while the ( ) compound gave the trans-trans diene. If the transition state is in the chair form (e.g., taking the meso isomer), one methyl must be axial and the other equatorial and the product must be the cis-trans alkene ... 

Dimerization of methylketene is catalyzed by an amine, trimethylsilylquinine, to give the P-lactone enantioselectively (Scheme 27) [129]. The catalyst amine attacks the ketene to form an ammonium enolate, an electron donating alkene. The donor is strong enough to react with a ketene across the C=0 bond. That is why the P-lactone is obtained instead of the 1,3-cyclobutandione, the uncatalyzed dimerization product of the monosubstituted ketene. 

The hydroboration of e%o-cyclic alkenes affords stereochemically complemental products between the catalyzed and uncatalyzed reaction (Scheme 1-16). The hy-... 

Unlike the late metal chemistry reviewed above, these reactions did not require Michael acceptor substrates, but the reactions were rather slow (turnover frequencies range from 2 to 13 h at 22°C). For phosphino-alkenes (Scheme 5-15, Eqs. 1-3), a competing uncatalyzed reaction gave six-membered phosphorinane rings (Scheme 5-15, Eq. 6) this could be minimized by avoiding light and increased temperature. For phosphino-alkynes (Scheme 5-15, Eqs. 4 and 5), the products were unstable and could not be isolated [14]. 

Diazomethane is also decomposed by N O)40 -43 and Pd(0) complexes43 . Electron-poor alkenes such as methyl acrylate are cyclopropanated efficiently with Ni(0) catalysts, whereas with Pd(0) yields were much lower (Scheme 1)43). Cyclopropanes derived from styrene, cyclohexene or 1-hexene were formed only in trace yields. In the uncatalyzed reaction between diazomethane and methyl acrylate, methyl 2-pyrazoline-3-carboxylate and methyl crotonate are formed competitively, but the yield of the latter can be largely reduced by adding an appropriate amount of catalyst. It has been verified that cyclopropane formation does not result from metal-catalyzed ring contraction of the 2-pyrazoline, Instead, a nickel(0)-carbene complex is assumed to be involved in the direct cyclopropanation of the olefin. The preference of such an intermediate for an electron-poor alkene is in agreement with the view that nickel carbenoids are nucleophilic 44). 

Based on a detailed investigation, it was concluded that the exceptional ability of the molybdenum compounds to promote cyclopropanation of electron-poor alkenes is not caused by intermediate nucleophilic metal carbenes, as one might assume at first glance. Rather, they seem to interfere with the reaction sequence of the uncatalyzed formation of 2-pyrazolines (Scheme 18) by preventing the 1-pyrazoline - 2-pyrazoline tautomerization from occurring. Thereby, the 1-pyrazoline has the opportunity to decompose purely thermally to cyclopropanes and formal vinylic C—H insertion products. This assumption is supported by the following facts a) Neither Mo(CO)6 nor Mo2(OAc)4 influence the rate of [3 + 2] cycloaddition of the diazocarbonyl compound to the alkene. b) Decomposition of ethyl diazoacetate is only weakly accelerated by the molybdenum compounds, c) The latter do not affect the decomposition rate of and product distribution from independently synthesized, representative 1-pyrazolines, and 2-pyrazolines are not at all decomposed in their presence at the given reaction temperature. 

The uncatalyzed hydroboration-oxidation of an alkene usually affords the //-Markovnikov product while the catalyzed version can be induced to produce either Markovnikov or /z/z-Markovnikov products. The regioselectivity obtained with a catalyst has been shown to depend on the ligands attached to the metal and also on the steric and electronic properties of the reacting alkene.69 In the case of monosubstituted alkenes (except for vinylarenes), the anti-Markovnikov alcohol is obtained as the major product in either the presence or absence of a metal catalyst. However, the difference is that the metal-catalyzed reaction with catecholborane proceeds to completion within minutes at room temperature, while extended heating at 90 °C is required for the uncatalyzed transformation.60 It should be noted that there is a reversal of regioselectivity from Markovnikov B-H addition in unfunctionalized terminal olefins to the anti-Markovnikov manner in monosubstituted perfluoroalkenes, both in the achiral and chiral versions.70,71... 

Negishi reported the hydrogen transfer hydroalumination of alkenes with (/-Bu AKTIBA) and catalytic amounts of palladium and other late transition metal complexes.125 Although uncatalyzed hydroaluminations of alkenes with di-and trialkylalanes at elevated temperatures have long been known, their scope and limitations as well as their synthetic utility have not been extensively explored. 

As explained in the Introduction, alkene oxides (10.3) are generally chemically quite stable, indicating reduced reactivity compared to arene oxides. Under physiologically relevant conditions, they have little capacity to undergo rearrangement reactions, one exception being the acid-catalyzed 1,2-shift of a proton observed in some olefin epoxides (see Sect. 10.2.1 and Fig. 10.3). Alkene oxides are also resistant to uncatalyzed hydration, thus, in the absence of hydrolases enzymes, many alkene oxides that are formed as metabolites are stable enough to be isolated. 

Uncatalyzed addition reactions of Grignard reagents with nonconjugated alkenes and aUcynes are of limited use in synthesis. However, carbon-carbon double bonds substituted by a leaving group, such as an acetate, are susceptible to be displaced by organomagnesium compounds presumably by an addition-elimination pathway. A few examples have been reported (equation 64). 

Arylzinc reagents are completely inert towards alkenes and alkynes in the absence of any added catalyst, whereas the reported examples of uncatalyzed intermolecular carbozincations involving alkylzincs appear to be restricted to the more nucleophilic di(tert-butyl)zinc. 

Whereas the intermolecular uncatalyzed allylzincations of unactivated monosubstituted alkenes or disubstituted alkynes do not proceed readily, successful examples of intramolecular additions have been reported. 

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