Carbenes characteristics

Fischer carbenes characteristically contain a number of electron-withdrawing carbonyl ligands while the typical Ru, Os, or Ir carbene complexes described above frequently contain several cr-donor ligands. The metal centers in these former compounds, then, are rather electron-deficient, with nucleophilic attack at Ca being a favorable reaction. 

The Bamford-Stevens decomposition of tosylhydrazones by base has been applied to steroids, although not extensively. It has been demonstrated that the reaction proceeds via a diazo compound which undergoes rapid decomposition. The course of this decomposition depends upon the conditions in proton-donating solvents the reaction has the characteristics of a process involving carbonium ions, and olefins are formed, often accompanied by Wagner-Meerwein-type rearrangement. In aprotic solvents the diazo compound appears to give carbene intermediates which form olefins and insertion products ... 

A recent study by Frenking [84] investigated in great detail the influence of the carbene substitutents X and R at a pentacarbonyl-chromium Fischer-type complex. The electronic characteristics of these substituents control the reac-... 

Perhaps the most characteristic property of the carbon-carbon double bond is its ability readily to undergo addition reactions with a wide range of reagent types. It will be useful to consider addition reactions in terms of several categories (a) electrophilic additions (b) nucleophilic additions (c) radical additions (d) carbene additions (e) Diels-Alder cycloadditions and (f) 1,3-dipolar additions. 

The most convenient tool for the characterisation of NHCs is NMR spectroscopy, in particular C H NMR. As a case study, the carbenes IPr and SIPr, and their corresponding salts IPr HCl and SIPr HCl were chosen. As described above (Scheme 1.2), free carbenes are often obtained by deprotonation of the corresponding salt. The best diagnostic tool to observe the salt deprotonation, and thus indirectly monitor the carbene formation, is H NMR spectroscopy, by means of the disappearance of the characteristic acidic proton resonance. The signal corresponding to the latter (ff) is largely shifted downfield (typically 8-12 ppm) and disappears upon deprotonation (Fig. 1.5). 

Once coordinated to a metal centre, the signal corresponding to the carbene carbon atom is usually shifted upfield. The chemical shift of the carbene carbon atom (C ) for a given metal in a given oxidation state is usually characteristic (Table 1.1). 

A very useful class of intermediates in synthetic organic chemistry are carbenes CX2 (X = H, R, F, Cl, Br etc.)13). These molecules are typical representatives of molecular, monomeric, highly reactive and electronically unsaturated compounds. Their main characteristics are the following ... 

It has become common to classify all molecular compounds, which fulfill the above characteristics, as carbene analogs 9,13>. As a consequence, compounds of divalent silicon, germanium, tin, and lead may be regarded as carbene-like and are therefore called silylenes, germylenes, stannylenes, and plumbylenes. In contrast to carbenes they have one property in common the energetically most favorable electronic state is the singlet 1a2 found by experiments and calculations 9). 

It might be expected that the aromatic character of (14) would lend unique characteristics to its chemistry. Studies of the olefin addition and C—H insertion reactions of the carbene, however, indicate that it is poorly stabilized and highly reactive.<26)... 

Matrix isolation techniques have been applied for the generation and spectroscopic detection of a variety of carbenes. The structural elucidation of the matrix-isolated molecules is mostly based on the comparison of the experimental and calculated IR spectra. This interplay between theory and experiment is the characteristic feature of all the studies mentioned in this review. 

Since most of the carbenes 1 have triplet ground states, ESR spectroscopy allows to see the unpaired electrons and determine the local symmetry at the carbene center and the amount of spin delocalization.13-18 Most of the ESR spectra of carbenes reported in the literature have been recorded in organic glasses or powder samples at temperatures between 4 and 77 K. Many carbenes are slightly colored and exhibit characteristic absorptions extending to the visible region of the spectrum. UV/vis spectroscopy not only provides information on the excited states of carbenes, which in many cases are the reactive species during precursor photolyses, but also links low temperature spectroscopy to LFP in solution at room temperature. 

Another reaction of carbene la in an argon matrix is the carbonylation with CO to give ketene 10a.23 The carbonylation obviously proceeds with a very small barrier even at low temperature. The carboxylation with CO2, on the other hand, which is also a characteristic reaction of many carbenes, is not observed.70 The primary and rate-determining step of this reaction is the nucleophilic attack... 

The carboxylic acid derivatives li-lm can only be matrix-isolated if the corresponding quinone diazides 2i-2m are irradiated with monochromatic blue light (k = 436 nm).81 91 92 UV or broad-band visible irradiation rapidly results in the decarboxylation of the carbenes. As expected, the IR and UV/vis spectra of the carbenes are very similar to that of la. Oxygen trapping results in the formation of the photolabile carbonyl oxides 7. Thus, the carbenes li-lm were identified both spectroscopically and by their characteristic reaction with molecular oxygen. 

The quinone diazide 2o was investigated using LFP in solution at room temperature.25 As with la, the carbene lo does not show characteristic absorptions in the UV /vis region and therefore could not be directly monitored during the LFP experiments. By extrapolation of quenching plots to zero quencher concentration the life-time of lo in Freon-113 was determined to 2.5 p,s, slightly longer than that of la with 1.65 ps. 

The matrix photochemistry of 2v proved to be fairly complicated.108 The primary product of the photolysis of 2v is carbene lv, which was identified by ESR spectroscopy. Under the conditions of matrix isolation the carbene showed the expected reactivity towards molecular oxygen (formation of carbonyl oxide 7v) and carbon monoxide (formation of ketene lOv) (Scheme 22). In contrast to the oxocyclohexadienylidenes (la and derivatives) carbene lv slowly reacted with CO2 to give an a-lactone with the characteristic C=0 stretching vibration at 1896 cm-1. The latter reaction indicates that lv is — as expected — more nucleophilic than la. 

The properties of carbenes are also expected to depend very greatly on the electronic characteristics of substituents bound to the divalent carbon. For example, many carbenes with heteroatomic elements attached directly to the central carbon are calculated to have single ground states (Mueller et al., 1981). The early, pioneering work on the stereochemistry of the reaction of carbenes with olefins was done with dibromocarbene (Skell and Garner,... 

Carbenes with triplet ground states are, of course, paramagnetic. Thus they exhibit characteristic epr spectra which can be used to confirm their presence, to provide some data on their structure, and, at least in principle, to reveal AGST in favorable cases. The first epr spectrum of a randomly oriented triplet carbene was observed for DPM (Murray et al., 1962). In subsequent years spectra of many carbenes have been recorded (Table 3). These spectra are commonly interpreted by fitting the results to a spin Hamiltonian H (3), to give the zero field parameters D and E (Stevens, 1952). In the usual... 

Closs and Trifunac, 1970 Baldwin and Andrist, 1971 Lepley and Closs, 1972 Bethell and McDonald, 1977). The formation of free radicals from aromatic carbenes is often easily detected by the fast laser spectroscopic techniques discussed earlier. The radicals generally have characteristic absorption spectra and reactivity patterns that make their identification certain. The direct insertion reaction of singlet carbenes is not expected to generate free radicals. 

Alternatively, if some of the reaction occurs by the hydrogen abstraction-recombination route proceeding through free radicals, then some mono-deuteriated (crossed) products will be formed (14). The former result is taken to be characteristic of the reaction of a singlet carbene, the latter that of a triplet. 

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