Benzyl radicals reaction with nitroxides

The reaction between nitroxides and carbon-centered radicals occurs at near (but not at) diffusion controlled rates. Rate constants and Arrhenius parameters for coupling of nitroxides and various carbon-centered radicals have been determined.508 311 The rate constants (20 °C) for the reaction of TEMPO with primary, secondary and tertiary alkyl and benzyl radicals are 1.2, 1.0, 0.8 and 0.5x109 M 1 s 1 respectively. The corresponding rate constants for reaction of 115 are slightly higher. If due allowance is made for the afore-mentioned sensitivity to radical structure510 and some dependence on reaction conditions,511 the reaction can be applied as a clock reaction to estimate rate constants for reactions between carbon-centered radicals and monomers504 506"07312 or other substrates.20... 

Prochiral carbon radicals have enantiotopic faces reaction with chiral nitroxides can result in two possible diastereomeric products (Scheme 9). Our laboratory has been investigating the ability of chiral nitroxides to differentiate between the two enantiotopic faces of a transient prochiral carbon radical. In many of the examples, the prochiral radical is generated by the lead dioxide oxidation of a secondary benzylic hydrazine. Early work utilized a camphor-derived nitroxide 27, which was coupled to a secondary benzylic prochiral carbon radical with low but reproducible stereoselectivity (Scheme 10) [26]. The stereoselectivity jumped dramatically upon moving to a conformationally rigid nitroxide in the form of the steroid doxyl radical... 

Another strategy involves decomposition of a peroxide or other initiator in the presence of a monomer. Conditions can be chosen such that only one unit of monomer is consumed. I hus, decomposition of UBPOX in S in the presence of DTBN provides 101 (Scheme 9.20). " The monomer initiator and/or combination should be chosen with care to obtain high yield of effective alkoxyamines. Many oxygen-centered radicals react with monomer by multiple pathways. Specificities shown by oxygen-centered radicals in their reaction with monomers have been studied extensively and are discussed in Section 3.4.2. Hydrogen abstraction, often by a source of f-butoxy radicals at low temperature [e.g. (/BuO)2/hv, DBPOX, " /BuOOH/Co(lI) "- j, in the presence of a nitroxide is another common method for generating benzylic and other alkoxyamines. 

N-Alkoxylamines 88 are a class of initiators in "living" radical polymerization (Scheme 14). A new methodology for their synthesis mediated by (TMSlsSiH has been developed. The method consists of the trapping of alkyl radicals generated in situ by stable nitroxide radicals. To accomplish this simple reaction sequence, an alkyl bromide or iodide 87 was treated with (TMSlsSiH in the presence of thermally generated f-BuO radicals. The reaction is not a radical chain process and stoichiometric quantities of the radical initiator are required. This method allows the generation of a variety of carbon-centered radicals such as primary, secondary, tertiary, benzylic, allylic, and a-carbonyl, which can be trapped with various nitroxides. 

For styrene-based random copolymers, functional groups can be introduced into the polymer chains via copolymerization with functional styrene derivatives, because the electronic effects of the substituents are small in the metal-catalyzed polymerizations in comparison to the ionic counterparts. Random copolymer R-6 is of this category, synthesized from styrene and />acetoxystyrene.372 It can be transformed into styrene// -vinylphenol copolymers by hydrolysis.380 The benzyl acetate and the benzyl ether groups randomly distributed in R-7 and R-8 were transformed into benzyl bromide, which can initiate the controlled radical polymerizations of styrene in the presence of copper catalysts to give graft copolymers.209 Epoxy groups can be introduced, as in R-9, by the copper-catalyzed copolymerizations without loss of epoxy functions, while the nitroxide-mediated systems suffer from side reactions due to the high-temperature reaction.317... 

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