Anions, ambident reactivity

Ambident reactivity occurs for any substance displaying protomeric behavior. In basic medium anions in which negative charge is delocalized are formed this may be represented by the resonance formulas in Scheme 2. Each charged atom may react with an electrophilic center. The... 

The equation does not take into account such pertubation factors as steric effects, solvent effects, and ion-pair formation. These factors, however, may be neglected when experiments are carried out in the same solvent at the same temperature and concentration for an homogeneous set of substrates. So, for a given ambident nucleophile the rate ratio kj/kj will depend on A and B, which vary with (a) the attacked electrophilic center, (b) the solvent, and (c) the counterpart cationic species of the anion. The important point in this kind of study is to change only one parameter at a time. This simple rule has not always been followed, and little systematic work has been done in this field (12) stiH widely open after the discovery of the role played by single electron transfer mechanism in ambident reactivity (1689). 

The reaction of alkyl isothiocyanates, RNCS, with diphenylphosphinic hydrazide (338) in benzene has been reported.308 The bis(diethylamino)[(methylthio)thiocarbon-yl]carbenium salts (339 X = I or BF4) display ambident reactivity and can react either at carbenium carbon (hard nucleophiles) or at the thiocarbonyl sulfur atom (soft nucleophiles).309 Electrochemically generated superoxide reacts with dithioic S,S -diesters (dicarbothiolates) (340 Ar = C5H3N or C6H4) to give the monocarboxylate anions in 100% yield before giving the dicarboxylate anions.310... 

Ambident reactivity was shown by oximate anions normally, Oarylation predominated over N-arylation, with ratios of oxime ethers to nitrones ranging from 9 1 (for the benzophenone oxime anion) to 1.7 1 (for the fluorenone oxime anion) [77]. The arylation of two heterocyclic oximes was performed under mild conditions and led mainly to the corresponding oxime ethers which served as good precursors for the generation of unstable aryl fulminates, ArONC [79,80],... 

Linton BR, Goodman MS, Hamilton AD. Nitronate anion recognition and modulation of ambident reactivity by hydrogen-bonding receptors. Chem Eur J. 2000,6 2449-2455. 

Azlactone is commonly utilized as a precursor of a-quatemary a-amino acids and various heterocyclic compounds [28-30]. Because the enol form of azlactone has aromatic character, facile deprotonation from the C4-position affords the corresponding enolate under the influence of various bases. Interestingly, the enolate ion shows ambident reactivity and attacks the electrophile at either the C4-position (a-addition) or the C2-position (y-addition), thus acting as an a-amino enolate or an acyl anion equivalent, respectively (Fig. 1). The site-selectivity associated with this enolate seems to be heavily dependent on its stereoelectronic characteristics, and introduction of a bulky substituent into the Cl- or C4-position suppresses the nucleophilicity at the particular position. 

Mercury and tin in complexes (68 or 69) (Scheme 32 (154 mav behave as electrophilic centers (155. 156). Under basic conditions, the reactive species is an ambident anion (70) (Scheme 33). 

Since the exocyclic sulfur is more reactive in the ambident anion than in A-4-thiazoIine-2-thione. greater nucleophilic reactivity is to be expected. Thus a large variety of thioethers were prepared in good yields starting from alkylhalides (e.g.. Scheme 38 (54, 91, 111, 166-179). lactones (54, 160), aryl halides (54, 152. 180, 181), acyl chlorides (54. 149, 182-184). halothiazoles (54, 185-190), a-haloesters (149. 152. 177. 191-194), cyanuric chloride (151). fV.N-dimethylthiocarbamoyl chloride (151, 152. 195. 196), /3-chloroethyl ester of acrylic acid (197), (3-dimethylaminoethyl chloride (152). l,4-dichloro-2-butyne (152), 1,4-dichloro-2-butene (152), and 2-chloro-propionitrile (152). A general... 

Hydroxyindole (181) represents a well known example of a compound in which the hydroxyl group is to the ring heteroatom. The equilibrium mixture again contains mainly the carbonyl form (182), indoxyl. Deprotonation gives a reactive ambident anion which can be methylated either on oxygen or C-2 (Scheme 73). Indoxyl is easily oxidized to indigo (184), which may be formed by dimerization of the radical (183) produced by electron loss from the anion. 

The pattern of reactivity is similar to that discussed for the azolinones in Sections 4.02.1.1.4 and 4.02.3.7.1. A difference is the greater nucleophilicity of sulfur, and thus more reaction of the ambident anion with electrophiles occurs at sulfur. 

Alkylations in dry media of the ambident 2-naphthoxide anion were performed under the action of focused microwave activation. Whereas the yields were identical to those obtained under the action of A for benzylation, they were significantly improved under microwave irradiation conditions for the more difficult n-octylation (a less reactive electrophilic reagent). No change in selectivity was observed, however, indicating the lack of influence of ionic polarization [94],... 

Rawal s group developed an intramolecular aryl Heck cyclization method to synthesize benzofurans, indoles, and benzopyrans [83], The rate of cyclization was significantly accelerated in the presence of bases, presumably because the phenolate anion formed under the reaction conditions was much more reactive as a soft nucleophile than phenol. In the presence of a catalytic amount of Herrmann s dimeric palladacyclic catalyst (101) [84], and 3 equivalents of CS2CO3 in DMA, vinyl iodide 100 was transformed into ortho and para benzofuran 102 and 103. In the mechanism proposed by Rawal, oxidative addition of phenolate 104 to Pd(0) is followed by nucleophilic attack of the ambident phenolate anion on o-palladium intermediate 105 to afford aryl-vinyl palladium species 106 after rearomatization of the presumed cyclohexadienone intermediate. Reductive elimination of palladium followed by isomerization of the exocyclic double bond furnishes 102. 

Smith and Hanson, 1971). Upon addition of NaBPh4, the free anion was converted into the ion pair, and upon addition of dibenzo-18-crown-6 [11] the ion pair was converted into the free anion. The results (Table 26) show the free anion to be much more reactive than the ion pair towards both methyl iodide and methyl tosylate. The increase in rate is again mainly due to the enhanced reactivity of the hard oxygen centre. The ratio of the rates of alkylation at the two sites of the ambident anion (kN/k0) decreased from about 1.2 for the ion pair to 0.55 and almost zero for the free anion. Increased alkylation of the hard... 

As is also true for ambident anions, substances exhibiting alpha effects in their reactions consistently deviate from the anticipated structure-reactivity correlations known for simple nucleophiles. 

Molecules having two reactive centers that are noninteracting or only weakly interacting, such as the carboxylate anions in malonate or succinate, are not considered to be ambident. The term bifunctional should be used to describe these compounds. If a molecule contains more than two interacting centers, the terms polydent or multident should be used. Examples of such nucleophiles include anions derived from malonic esters, /3-keto esters, /8-diketones, as well as phenoxide ions. 

Methanol-0-4 methyl nitrite, and dimethyl disulfide have been examined as potential chemical probes for distinguishing between alkoxides and enolates in the gas phase.171 Methanol-0-d proved to be unsuitable and methyl nitrite reacts too slowly in contrast, the reactive ambident behaviour of dimethyl disulfide results in elimination across the C—S bond on reaction with alkoxides ( hard bases ) and attack at sulfur by enolates ( soft bases ). This probe has been applied to investigation of the anionic oxy-Cope rearrangement. The dianionic oxy-Cope rearrangement is a key step in a squarate ester cascade involving stereoinduced introduction of two alkenyllithium reagents cis to each other.172... 

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