Aqueous rate acceleration, Diels-Alder

The Diels-Alder reaction is one of the most important methods used to form cyclic structures and is one of the earliest examples of carbon-carbon bond formation reactions in aqueous media.21 Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous media were in fact first carried out in the 1930s, when the reaction was discovered,22 but no particular attention was paid to this fact until 1980, when Breslow23 made the dramatic observation that the reaction of cyclopentadiene with butenone in water (Eq. 12.1) was more than 700 times faster than the same reaction in isooctane, whereas the reaction rate in methanol is comparable to that in a hydrocarbon solvent. Such an unusual acceleration of the Diels-Alder reaction by water was attributed to the hydrophobic effect, 24 in which the hydrophobic interactions brought together the two nonpolar groups in the transition state. 

The pseudothermodynamic analysis of solvent elfects in 1-PrOH-water mixtures over the whole composition range (shown in Figure 7.3) depicts a combination of thermodynamic transfer parameters for diene and dienophile with isobaric activation parameters that allows for a distinction between solvent elfects on reactants (initial state) and on the activated complex. The results clearly indicate that the aqueous rate accelerations are heavily dominated by initial-state solvation effects. It can be concluded that for Diels-Alder reactions in water the causes of the acceleration involve stabilization of the activated complex by enforced hydrophobic interactions and by hydrogen bonding to water (Table 7.1, Figure 7.4). °... 

On the basis of the pronounced non-polar character of the majority of Diels-Alder reactants, efficient micellar catalysis of their reaction might be anticipated. The first time a micellar catalysed Diels-Alder reaction was mentioned, not the micelle itself, but some type of micellar catalysis, resulting in mutual binding of reactants was suggested to be responsible for the observed rate accelerations . Further investigations on the catalytic activity of micelles showed that several species which are able to form micelles in aqueous solution lead to higher yields in intramolecular Diels-Alder reactions . In detailed studies of the effects of /3-cyclodexlrin 12 on the rates of Diels-Alder reactions " it became clear that the infiuence of cyclodextrin micelles can lead either to inhibition or to acceleration (Table 27). 

The catalytic effect of water in the reactions of cyciopen-tadiene with methyl vinyl ketone (6) and acrylonitrile (5) has been studied by Blake et al. This effect is due to the enhanced hydrogen bonding in the transition state. This result can help to explain the acceleration of the reaction rate of Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous solution (see below). 

The extreme influence water can exert on the Diels-Alder reaction was rediscovered by Breslow in 1980, much by coincidence . Whale studying the effect of p-cyclodextrin on the rate of a Diels-Alder reaction in water, accidentally, the addition of the cyclodextrin was omitted, but still rate constants were observed that were one to two orders of magnitude larger than those obtained in organic solvents. The investigations that followed this remarkable observation showed that the acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions by water is a general phenomenon. Table 1.2 contains a selection from the multitude of Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous media that have been studied Note that the rate enhancements induced by water can amount up to a factor 12,800 compared to organic solvents (entry 1 in Table 1.2). 

Breslow studied the dimerisation of cyclopentadiene and the reaction between substituted maleimides and 9-(hydroxymethyl)anthracene in alcohol-water mixtures. He successfully correlated the rate constant with the solubility of the starting materials for each Diels-Alder reaction. From these relations he estimated the change in solvent accessible surface between initial state and activated complex " . Again, Breslow completely neglects hydrogen bonding interactions, but since he only studied alcohol-water mixtures, the enforced hydrophobic interactions will dominate the behaviour. Recently, also Diels-Alder reactions in dilute salt solutions in aqueous ethanol have been studied and minor rate increases have been observed Lubineau has demonstrated that addition of sugars can induce an extra acceleration of the aqueous Diels-Alder reaction . Also the effect of surfactants on Diels-Alder reactions has been studied. This topic will be extensively reviewed in Chapter 4. 

The rate constants for the catalysed Diels-Alder reaction of 2.4g with 2.5 (Table 2.3) demonstrate that the presence of the ionic group in the dienophile does not diminish the accelerating effect of water on the catalysed reaction. Comparison of these rate constants with those for the nonionic dienophiles even seems to indicate a modest extra aqueous rate enhancement of the reaction of 2.4g. It is important to note here that no detailed information has been obtained about the exact structure of the catalytically active species in the oiganic solvents. For example, ion pairing is likely to occur in the organic solvents. 

In Chapter 2 the Diels-Alder reaction between substituted 3-phenyl-l-(2-pyridyl)-2-propene-l-ones (3.8a-g) and cyclopentadiene (3.9) was described. It was demonstrated that Lewis-acid catalysis of this reaction can lead to impressive accelerations, particularly in aqueous media. In this chapter the effects of ligands attached to the catalyst are described. Ligand effects on the kinetics of the Diels-Alder reaction can be separated into influences on the equilibrium constant for binding of the dienoplule to the catalyst (K ) as well as influences on the rate constant for reaction of the complex with cyclopentadiene (kc-ad (Scheme 3.5). Also the influence of ligands on the endo-exo selectivity are examined. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, studies aimed at enantioselective catalysis are presented, resulting in the first example of enantioselective Lewis-acid catalysis of an organic transformation in water. 

Interestingly, at very low concentrations of micellised Qi(DS)2, the rate of the reaction of 5.1a with 5.2 was observed to be zero-order in 5.1 a and only depending on the concentration of Cu(DS)2 and 5.2. This is akin to the turn-over and saturation kinetics exhibited by enzymes. The acceleration relative to the reaction in organic media in the absence of catalyst, also approaches enzyme-like magnitudes compared to the process in acetonitrile (Chapter 2), Cu(DS)2 micelles accelerate the Diels-Alder reaction between 5.1a and 5.2 by a factor of 1.8710 . This extremely high catalytic efficiency shows how a combination of a beneficial aqueous solvent effect, Lewis-acid catalysis and micellar catalysis can lead to tremendous accelerations. 

Engberts [3e, 9] has extensively investigated the Diels Alder reaction in aqueous medium. Recently Engberts and colleagues reported [9c] a kinetic study of a Diels Alder reaction of N-alkyl maleimides with cyclopentadiene, 2,3-dimethyl-1,3-butadiene and 1,3-cyclohexadiene in different solvents. The reaction rates of the cycloadditions with the open-chain diene relative to w-hexane are reported in Table 6.3. The aqueous medium greatly accelerates the Diels Alder reaction and the acceleration increases as the hydrophobic character of the alkyl group of the dienophile increases. These and other kinetic data [3e, 9], along with the observation that the intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction is also accelerated in... 

After the discovery of the remarkable acceleration of some Diels Alder reactions performed in water, a number of polar non-aqueous solvents and their salty solutions were investigated as reaction medium. This revolutionized the concept that the Diels-Alder reaction is quite insensitive to the effect of the medium and emphasized that a careful choice of the solvent is crucial for the success of the reaction. The polarity of the reaction medium is an important variable which also provides some insights into the mechanism of the reaction. If the reaction rate increases by using a polar medium, this means that the transition state probably has polar character, while the absence of a solvent effect is generally related to an uncharged transition state. 

The retro-Diels-Alder (RDA) reaction of anthracenedione (Eq 12.5) proceeds considerably faster in aqueous solution than in organic solvents.32 The addition of organic solvents to water retards the reaction, whereas glucose induces a modest acceleration. The results suggest that the origin of rate acceleration involves mainly enhanced hydrogen bonding of water to the activation complex for the RDA reaction. 

Density functional theory study of aqueous-phase rate acceleration and endo/exo selectivity of the butadiene and acrolein Diels-Alder reaction72 shows that approximately 50% of the rate acceleration and endo/exo selectivity is attributed to hydrogen bonding and the remainder to bulk-phase effects, including enforced hydrophobic interactions and cosolvent effects. This appears to be supported by the experimental results of Engberts where a pseudothermodynamic analysis of the rate acceleration in water relative to 1-propanol and 1-propanol-water mixtures indicates that hydrogen-bond stabilization of the polarized activated complex and the decrease of the hydrophobic surface area of the reactants during the activation process are the two main causes of the rate enhancement in water.13... 

An ab initio MO calculation by Jorgensen revealed enhanced hydrogen bonding of a water molecule to the transition states for the Diels-Alder reactions of cyclopentadiene with methyl vinyl ketone and acrylonitrile, which indicates that the observed rate accelerations for Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous solution arise from the hydrogenbonding effect in addition to a relatively constant hydrophobic term.7,76 Ab initio calculation using a self-consistent reaction field continuum model shows that electronic and nuclear polarization effects in solution are crucial to explain the stereoselectivity of nonsymmetrical... 

Some reports indicated that the Diels-Alder reaction could be done in aqueous environments with a potential for accelerated reaction rates under the right conditions (Rideout and Breslow, 1980 Blokzijl and Engberts, 1992 Pai and Smith, 1995 Otto et al., 1996 Wijnen and Engberts, 1997), and the addition of InCl3 was determined to act as a catalyst in aqueous environments (Loh et al., 1996). For a review of organic reactions that can be done in aqueous media, see Li (2005). 

The Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction of 2,6-dimethyl-1,4-benzoquinone with methyl (ii)-3,5-hexadienoate, carried out in toluene as solvent, gives only traces of the cycloadduct shown in Eq. (5-160), even after seven days. However, when the solvent is changed to water and sodium ( )-3,5-hexadienoate is used as the diene, 77 cmol/mol of the desired cycloadduct is obtained after one hour and esterification with diazomethane [714] f Again, hydrophobic interactions between diene and dienophile in the aqueous medium seem to be responsible for this remarkable and synthetically useful rate acceleration. 

Grieco, P. A. Giamer, P. He, Z.-M. "Micellar" catalysis in the aqueous intermolecular Diels-Alder reaction Rate acceleration and enhanced selectivity, Tetrahedron Lett. 1983, 24,1897-1900. 

Breslow and co-workers have performed some of the most outstanding work in this field and their results initiated a flurry of research. They found that the rates of reaction and selectivity in the Diels-Alder reactions are improved in an aqueous system (Figure 3.6). Additionally, the presence of salts or 3-cyclo-dextrins can enhance the hydrophobic effect, which causes organic molecules to cluster together in aqueous solution, and further accelerate the Diels-Alder reaction. It should also be noted that related photochemical [2 + 2] additions can be performed using water, and in some cases these show similar rate enhancements due to hydrophobic effects. 

Copper Lewis acids also find utility in Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous media. Engberts et al. have reported large rate acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions by Cu(N03)2 in water [89]. The higher Lewis acidity of Cu(II) compared with Co(II), Ni(II), and Zn(II) in aqueous media was also established in their study. An enantio-selective variant of the Diels-Alder reaction using a catalyst derived from L-arbine and Cu(OTf)2 (210) in water was reported recently (Sch. 47) [90]. 

In most Diels-Alder reactions, no catalyst is needed, but Lewis acids are effective catalysts in many cases, particularly those in which Z in the dienophile is a C=0 or C=N group. A Lewis acid catalyst usually increases both the regioselec-tivity of the reaction (in the sense given above) and the extent of endo addition, °° and, in the case of enantioselective reactions, the extent of enantioselectivity. It has been shown that InCla is an effective catalyst for aqueous Diels-Alder reactions,which is suitable for ionic Diels-Alder reactions, and there are other Lewis acid catalysts that are effective in water. °° Brpnsted acids have also been used to accelerate the rate of the Diels-Alder reaction.Lanthanum triflate [La(OTf)3] has been reported as a reusable catalyst ° ° and Me3SiNTf2 has been used as a green Lewis acid catalyst. ° Cationic Diels-Alder catalysts have been developed, particularly oxazaborolidine catalysts. ° Some Diels-Alder reactions can also be catalyzed by the addition of a stable cation radical, for... 

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