Substitution reactions aryl diazonium salts

The first widely used intermediates for nucleophilic aromatic substitution were the aryl diazonium salts. Aryl diazonium ions are usually prepared by reaction of an aniline with nitrous acid, which is generated in situ from a nitrite salt.81 Unlike aliphatic diazonium ions, which decompose very rapidly to molecular nitrogen and a carbocation (see Part A, Section 4.1.5), aryl diazonium ions are stable enough to exist in solution at room temperature and below. They can also be isolated as salts with nonnucleophilic anions, such as tetrafluoroborate or trifluoroacetate.82 Salts prepared with 0-benzenedisulfonimidate also appear to have potential for synthetic application.83... 

This procedure has been used to prepare a variety of substituted a-bromohydrocinnamic acids 2 p-acetyl-a-bromohydro-cinnamic acid was prepared for the first time by this method. The method illustrates a typical application of the Meerwein reaction for the arylation of unsaturated substrates.3 In this reaction a catalytic amount of a copper(I) salt is used to reduce an aryl diazonium salt forming an aryl radical and a copper(II) halide. Addition of the aryl radical to an unsaturated substrate forms an alkyl radical that is reoxidized by the copper(II) halide present forming an alkyl halide and regenerating the copper(I) salt catalyst. In this preparation, the product, an a-bromo acid, is formed in an acidic reaction mixture and dehydro-halogenation does not occur. However, dehydrohalogenation... 

The Balz-Schiemann and Wallach reactions The Balz-Schiemann reaction (the thermal decomposition of an aryl diazonium salt. Scheme 46) was for many years the only practical method for the introduction of a fluorine atom into an aromatic ring not bearing electron-withdrawing substituents. This reaction, first reported in the late 1800s, was studied in fluorine-18 chemistry as early as 1967 [214]. It involves the generation of an aryl cation by thermal decomposition, which then reacts with solvent, nucleophiles or other species present to produce a substituted aromatic compound. Use of fluorine-18-labelled... 

The Pschorr Reaction allows the preparation of biaryl tricyclics by intramolecular substitution of one arene by an aryl radical. This radical is generated in situ from an aryl diazonium salt by copper catalysis. Although excess copper salts are used, the yield is normally moderate. 

Amino-substituted 1,2,3,4-thiatriazoles 87 were first prepared by a similar reaction starting from the readily available thiosemicarbazides <1895CB74>. In subsequent work this method has been widely used to prepare a variety of derivatives <1981JIC1087>. A modification of this method is to use the aza transfer reaction between aryl diazonium salts and 4-substituted thiosemicarbazide 139 (Equation 10) <19780PP59>. 

Ring closure reactions taking place by intramolecular addition of an aromatic radical to a double bond have been widely studied on both their regio- and stereochemical aspects [93]. Aryl halides and diazonium salts substituted at ortho- position with a 0-allyl or TV-allyl chain were used for the preparation of 2,3-dihydrobenzofuranes and 2,3-dihydro-1/7-indoles under different reaction conditions. The reaction pattern involves the generation of an aryl radical 20, which reacts with the double bond in a 5-exo trig fashion to afford the exocyclic radical 21, plausible of reduction by a hydrogen donor to obtain the reduced-cyclized product 22 (Sch. 23) [93d,94]. 

Because aryl diazonium salts are reasonably stable, other nucleophiles may be introduced to capture the aryl cation when the diazonium salt is heated. Among these, iodide ion is important as it allows the preparation of aryl iodides in good yield. These compounds are not so easy to make by electrophilic substitution (Chapter 22) as aryl chlorides or bromides because iodine is not reactive enough to attack benzene rings. Aryl iodides are useful in the more modern palladium chemistry of the Heck reaction, which you will meet in Chapter 48. 

Base-catalyzed reaction between an aryl diazonium salt and an aromatic hydrocarbon (or aromatic heterocycle) to form a diaryl compound (or aryl-substituted heterocycle) involves radical coupling reaction, as shown in Scheme 2.49. 

The diazonium group can be replaced by a number of groups. " Some of these are nucleophilic substitutions, with S l mechanisms (p. 432), but others are free-radical reactions and are treated in Chapter 14. The solvent in all these reactions is usually water. With other solvents it has been shown that the Sj-jl mechanism is favored by solvents of low nucleophilicity, while those of high nucleophilicity favor free-radical mechanisms. The N2 group can be replaced by CP, Br, and CN, by a nucleophilic mechanism (see OS IV, 182), but the Sandmeyer reaction is much more useful (14-20). Transition metal catalyzed reactions are known involving aryl-diazonium salts, and diazonium variants of the Heck reaction (13-10) and Suzuki coupling (13-12) were discussed previously. As mentioned on p. 866 it must be... 

In an interesting technique for the preparation of aromatic azides, aryl diazonium salts are treated with azide ions." "" At least in a very formal sense, one can consider this reaction as a substitution process, although the real mechanism of this transformation is much more complicated. An excellent... 

The Pd )-catalyzed reaction of aryl diazonium salts with mono-substituted alkenes [1] was found to be an interesting alternative to the well-known Pd - catalyzed arylhalide alkene coupling (Heck type reaction) or the copper mediated reaction of aryl diazonium salts with alkenes (Meerwein arylation) [2], The reaction can be run without isolation of the diazonium salt in presence of only 0.5 to 1 mol% of the Palladium catalyst in a one pot procedure, in high yield and under nuld conditions. The resulting styrene is reduced in a subsequent hydrogenation step with an in situ generated heterogeneous Pd-catalyst. The combination of three reaction steps without isolation of intermediates and the virtually complete recovery of the Pd-metal at the end of the reaction sequence makes this process [4] extremely efficient. 

Azo coupling (Section 22.19) Formation of a compound of the type ArN=NAr by reaction of an aryl diazonium salt with an arene. The arene must be strongly activated toward electrophilic aromatic substitution that is, it must bear a powerful electron-releasing substituent such as —OH or —NR2. 

Aryl diazonium salts can also undergo coupling reactions with phenol or aromatic amines, which possess nucleophilic OH or NH2 groups, respectively. This electrophilic substitution reaction (with the diazonium salt as the electrophile) produces highly coloured azo compounds. 

Irradiation of aromatic diazonium salts results in an efficient elimination of nitrogen and the formation of substitution products. To some extent the mechanism of the reaction is dependent upon the conditions under which the reaction is being carried out and whether sensitization is being employed. Typically, the irradiation of the aryl diazonium salts 574... 

To exploit the synthetic versatility of aryl diazonium salts, be prepared to reason backward. When you see a fluorine attached to a benzene ring, for example, realize that it probably will have to be introduced by a Schiemann reaction of an arylamine realize that the required arylamine is derived from a nitroarene, and that the nitro group is introduced by nitration. Be aware that an unsubstituted position of a benzene ring need not have always been that way. It might once have borne an amino group that was used to control the orientation of electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions before being removed by reductive deamination. The strategy... 

Examples of the three mechansims are, respectively (a) hydrolysis of aryl diazonium salts to phenols (b) reaction of aryl diazonium ions with Ns to give the aryl azides " and (c) the Sandmeyer reaction, involving cuprous chloride or bromide for synthesis of aryl halides. Specific synthetically important substitution processes are considered in the succeeding sections. 

When Pschorr reported more than a century ago on the first intramolecular homolytic aromatic substitution [25], he showed that biaryls could be readily prepared by intramolecular homolytic aromatic substitution using reactive aryl radicals and arenes as radical acceptors. The aryl radicals were generated by treatment of arene-diazonium salts with copper(l) ions. Today, this reaction and related processes are referred to as Pschorr reactions. It was later found that radical biaryl synthesis could be conducted without copper salts by photochemical or thermal generation of the aryl radical from the corresponding diazonium salt [26], Moreover, the reduction of aryl diazonium salts offers another route to generate reactive aryl radicals. Hence, electrochemistry [27], titanium(lll) ions [28], Fe(II)-salts [29], tet-rathiafulvalene [30] and iodide [31] have each been used successfully for the reduction of diazonium salts to generate the corresponding aryl radicals [32]. As an example, the iodide-induced cycUzation of diazonium salt 6 to phenanthrene derivative 7 is presented in Scheme 13.3 [31]. For further information on the... 

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