Alkylation with nitrobenzyl chloride

A variation of the Madelung cyclization involves installing a functional group at the o-methyl group which can facilitate cyclization. For example, a triphenylphosphonio substituent converts the reaction into an intramolecular Wittig condensation. The required phosphonium salts can be prepared by starting with o-nitrobenzyl chloride or bromide[9]. The method has been applied to preparation of 2-alkyl and 2-arylindoles as well as to several 2-alkenylindoles. Tabic 3.2 provides examples. 

A study of alkylations with a group of substituted benzyl halides and a range of Friedel-Crafts catalysts has provided insight into the trends in selectivity and orientation that accompany changes in both the alkyl group and the catalysts. There is a marked increase in substrate selectivity on going from / -nitrobenzyl chloride to /i-methoxybenzyl chloride. For example, with titanium tetrachloride as the catalyst, Aitoi Abenz increases from 2.5 to 97. This increase in substrate selectivity is accompanied by an increasing preference for para substitution. With /i-nitrobenzyl chloride, the ortho para ratio is 2 1 (the... 

A mechanism of this type permits substitution of certain aromatic and ahphatic nitro compounds by a variety of nucleophiles. These reactions were discovered as the result of efforts to explain the mechanistic basis for high-yield carbon alkylation of the 2-nitropropane anion by p-nitrobenzyl chloride. p-Nitrobenzyl bromide and iodide and benzyl halides that do not contain a nitro substituent give mainly the unstable oxygen alkylation product with this ambident anion ... 

Since nitrobenzene is a much stronger base than alkyl halides, the concentration of RCI.AICI3 will be small and hence k i will be large and, therefore, much greater than k 2. Equation (180), therefore, reduces to a third-order expression which includes the equilibrium constant k jk i) of the first step and this accounts for the lower rates with 4-nitrobenzyl chloride since it is a poorer base than the 3,4-dichloro compound. 

The ability of a nitro group in the substrate to bring about electron-transfer free radical chain nucleophilic substitution (SrnI) at a saturated carbon atom is well documented.39 Such electron transfer reactions are one of the characteristic features of nitro compounds. Komblum and Russell have established the SrnI reaction independently the details of the early history have been well reviewed by them.39 The reaction of p-nitrobenzyl chloride with a salt of nitroalkane is in sharp contrast to the general behavior of the alkylation of the carbanions derived from nitroalkanes here, carbon alkylation is predominant. The carbon alkylation process proceeds via a chain reaction involving anion radicals and free radicals, as shown in Eq. 5.24 and Scheme... 

The first clue to the existence of the SrnI mechanism came from product studies both in aliphatic and aromatic cases. It was noticed that in the reaction of benzyl and substituted benzyl chlorides with the 2-nitropropane anion, oxygen alkylation, yielding the oxime and then the aldehyde, occurs exclusively in the case of benzyl chloride and 3-nitrobenzyl chloride, whereas, with 4-nitrobenzyl chloride, the yield of aldehyde is only 6% and the carbon-alkylated (104) product is obtained in 92% yield (Kornblum, 1975). This was interpreted as the result of a competition between 8, 2 (O-alkylation) and S l (C-alkylation) reactions. In the aromatic case, it was observed that the reaction of 5- and 6-halopseudocumenes with KNHj in liquid ammonia (Kim and Bunnett, 1970) forms the 5- and 6-pseudocumi-dines in a ratio which is the same whether the starting compound is the 5- or 6-isomer in the case of the chloro- and bromo-derivatives, as expected from an aryne mechanism (Scheme 9), whereas much more non-rearranged... 

For the reaction of fully saturated 1,3-dioxanes with electrophiles, an activation of the heterocycle by metalation either close to an appropriate functional group or by displacement of a functional group is necessary since deprotonation of unfunctionalized 1,3-dioxanes is not a common method. It was reported that 5-nitro-l,3-dioxanes were alkylated at C-5 using standard alkylation conditions (LDA, R-X) <2001TL105, 2006JOC2200> (Scheme 59) or by reaction with Michael acceptors <2002TL8351>. A 5-hydroxymethyl-5-nitro-l,3-dioxane was also amenable to alkylation after a photoinduced retro-aldol reaction had taken place in the presence of sodium methoxide. However, only 2-nitrobenzyl chloride was a suitable electrophile for an efficient alkylation <2004TL1737>. 

Kinetics and Mechanism of Reactions of Bis (methyl-2,2 -dimercaptodiethyl-amine) dinickel(II) with Alkyl Halides. The rates of reaction of [Ni2 CH3N-(CH2CH2S)2 2], structure III, with methyl iodide, benzyl bromide, benzyl chloride, p-chlorobenzyl chloride, and p-nitrobenzyl chloride have been studied as functions of temperature and concentration in chloroform (3). Absorbance measurements were utilized to determine the rates. All experiments were conducted with excess alkyl halide (20 to 1000 times the initial concentration of complex). Jicha and Busch (18) were able to isolate alkylated complexes of the composition... 

All data obtained on the rate of reaction of [Ni(NiL2)2]Cl2 with alkyl halides— i.e., methyl iodide, benzyl bromide, benzyl chloride, p-nitrobenzyl chloride, p-chlorobenzyl chloride, ethyl bromide, ethyl iodide, n-propyl bromide, and n-propyl iodide—conform closely to a pseudo-first-order rate law. Almost all experiments were carried out in the presence of an excess of alkyl halide. Since methanol solutions of the alkylated complexes have only negligible absorption at 495 m//, rates were obtained by graphs of log A0—A vs. time. The graphs are linear over the entire time interval, which corresponds to more than two half lives in most cases, passing through the origin at zero time. The rate is essentially the same whether measured by the spectrophotometric or conductivity method. 

The m-nitrobenzyl chloride analogue 2-(chloromethyl)-l-methyl-4-nitroimidazole reacts with the 2-nitropropane anions by the S l mechanism under phase-transfer conditions. A base-promoted nitrous acid elimination from the C-alkylated product gives alkenylimidazole derivatives84. 

W. S. Reich [96] prepared aromatic derivatives of trinitromethane (of the type IV) by acting with the silver salt of nitroform on ar-alkyl chlorides, as for example p- nitrobenzyl chloride ... 

A few nitro compounds have been obtained in good yields by the interaction of reactive halogen compounds with aci-nitro alkanes. The reaction is usually complicated in that both C- and 0-alkylation occurs. If the stability of the aci form of the nitro compound is high, then the tendency is toward alkylation on carbon rather than on oxygen. An example is the condensation of p-nitrobenzyl chloride with the sodium salt of nitro-ethane to give an 83% yield of 1-p-nitrobenzylnitroethane, P-OjNC.H CHjCHCNOjXIHj. ... 

Dimethylaniline has been prepared by reduction of the corresponding nitro compound, either chemically or catalyti-cally. It has been prepared from 3,4-dimethylphenol by heating with ammonia, ammonium bromide, and zinc bromide from w-toluidine hydrochloride by alkylation with methanol at high temperatures from anhydro-4-amino-2-methylbenzyl alcohol by dry distillation from calcium hydroxide from 2-methyl-S-aminobenzyl alcohol by reduction with sodium from 2-methyl-5-nitrobenzyl chloride and 2-methyl-S-nitrobenzyl acetate by catalytic reduction from o-xylene by direct amination with hy-droxylamine hydrochloride in the presence of aluminum chloride and from 3,4-dimethylacetophenone by the Beckmann rearrangement of the oxime.i" The present method has been published. ... 

The free radical chain reaction between PhCOCHjHgCl and 1-morpholinocyclohex-cne has been reported to involve addition of the acceptor radical PhCOCHj- to the jS-position of the enamine followed by electron transfer to regenerate the attacking radical (Scheme 19). Photostimulated reactions of simple alkylmercury halides failed since an electrophilic radical is required. Photolysis of p-nitrobenzyl chloride in the presence of enamines gave the -/>-nitrobenzyl ketone on hydrolysis . Radical mediated reductive alkylation of acyclic-enamines has also been reported with radical precursors such as PhSCH2CN, PhS02CH2Cl and Me3CS02CH2SePh . Reductive alkylation also occurred with chloromethyl p-tolyl sulphone in the presence of tributyltin hydride and azobis(isobutyronitrile) (AIBN) (Scheme 20). 

Other o-nitrophenol-containing resins have been prepared with the aim of increasing the distance between the reactive center and the macromolecular backbone, which should accelerate the active ester formation by achieving an easier approach of the reagents. Thus, the Friedel-Crafts alkylation of styrene-divinyl-benzene copolymer with 4-hydroxy-3-nitrobenzyl chloride promoted by aluminium trichloride gave 4-hydroxy-3-nitrobenzylated polystyrene (70) (approximately 30% of the aromatic rings of the polymer were substituted according to elemental... 

For SrnI C-alkylation of the conjugate anions of 2-nitropropionate esters, on reaction with p-nitrobenzyl chloride, only moderate asymmetric induction is induced when the ester is derived from a chiral carbohydrate the 8-phenyl menthol moiety is more effective. 

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