Aryl block metal

Especially in the early steps of the synthesis of a complex molecule, there are plenty of examples in which epoxides are allowed to react with organometallic reagents. In particular, treatment of enantiomerically pure terminal epoxides with alkyl-, alkenyl-, or aryl-Grignard reagents in the presence of catalytic amounts of a copper salt, corresponding cuprates, or metal acetylides via alanate chemistry, provides a general route to optically active substituted alcohols useful as valuable building blocks in complex syntheses. 

Allene (1) and its alkyl and aryl derivatives have long been used in organic synthesis, especially in cycloaddition reactions, whether these are thermally [5] or photochemi-cally induced and involve metal catalysis or polar reagents [2], Potentially more interesting derivatives arise when the allene group is connected with other unsaturated building blocks as shown in Scheme 5.1. 

Enantiomerically pure sulfoxides play an important role in asymmetric synthesis either as chiral building blocks or stereodirecting groups [156]. In the last years, metal- and enzyme-catalyzed asymmetric sulfoxidations have been developed for the preparation of optically active sulfoxides. Among the metal-catalyzed processes, the Kagan sulfoxidation [157] is the most efficient, in which the sulfide is enantioselectively oxidized by Ti(OzPr)4/tBuOOH in the presence of tartrate as chirality source. However, only alkyl aryl sulfides may be oxidized by this system in high enantiomeric excesses, and poor enantioselectivities were observed for dialkyl sulfides. 

Triarylphosphine ligands are of utmost importance in transition-metal catalysis. Thus, direct palladium-catalysed high-speed generation of these ligands from secondary phosphines and aryl halide building blocks would be a suitable and convergent synthetic route with high flexibility. Stadler and Kappe have shown that this method for the... 

Advantageously, catalytic amounts of rare earth metal triflates are used instead of stoichiometric amounts of aluminum trichloride in catalytic Fries rearrangements of carboxylic acid aryl esters furnishing keto building blocks, e.g. 10... 

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