Allyl rhodium complexes, alkylation intermediate

There are also several situations where the metal can act as both a homolytic and heterolytic catalyst. For example, vanadium complexes catalyze the epoxidation of allylic alcohols by alkyl hydroperoxides stereoselectively,57 and they involve vanadium(V) alkyl peroxides as reactive intermediates. However, vanadium(V)-alkyl peroxide complexes such as (dipic)VO(OOR)L, having no available coordination site for the complexation of alkenes to occur, react homolyti-cally.46 On the other hand, Group VIII dioxygen complexes generally oxidize alkenes homolytically under forced conditions, while some rhodium-dioxygen complexes oxidize terminal alkenes to methyl ketones at room temperature. 

Enolates can also be prepared by rhodinm-catalyzed isomerization of allylic Uthinm alcoholates, such as 14 (equation 5)". Subsequent treatment of the intermediately formed rhodium hydride complexes (15 and 16) with an electrophile led to the formation of various products. For example, alkyl halides gave a-alkylated ketones (17) in good yields, as shown in Table 4. Interestingly, addition of benzaldehyde under kinetically controlled... 

A comparison between experimental and MO data on regioselectivity concerning the hydroformylation of several vinyl substrates (propene, 2-methylpropene, 1-hexene, 3,3-dimethylbutene, fluoroethene, 3,3,3-trifluoropropene, vinyl methyl ether, allyl methyl ether, styrene) with unmodified rhodium catalysts was reported. The activation energies for the alkyl rhodium intermediate formation, computed at either level along the pathways to branched or linear aldehydes, allowed one to predict the regioselectivity ratios. Steric effects may be less important for the unmodified carbonyl complexes and electronic factors dominate, assuming that alkene insertion in Rh-H is irreversible. 

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