Carbenes, generation rearrangement

Due to the commercial availability of EMME in good purity, there has not been a need to develop new methods to prepare 3-anilino-acrylates therefore, only a few alternatives have been reported. One approach described thermal carbene generation from 37, and rearrangement to form 38. Cyclization in refluxing 1,2-dichlorobenzene (1,2-DCB) provided the 2, 3, 4-trisubstituted quinolines. An electron-withdrawing group (EWG) on the carbene carbon was required for this reaction, and therefore led to the EWG substitution in the 2-position of the quinoline. 

The most common rearrangement reaction of alkyl carbenes is the shift of hydrogen, generating an alkene. This mode of stabilization predominates to the exclusion of most intermolecular reactions of aliphatic carbenes and often competes with intramolecular insertion reactions. For example, the carbene generated by decomposition of the tosylhydrazone of 2-methylcyclohexanone gives mainly 1- and 3-methylcyclohexene rather than the intramolecular insertion product. 

Apart from the widely studied silver(i) A-heterocyclic carbenes, Stoltz and Beauchamp made the first report on the gas-phase synthesis of silver(i) Fischer carbenes from the loss of N2 in various diazo malonates upon electrospray ionization and subsequent collisional activation.118 The carbenes generated were capable of undergoing multiple Wolff rearrangements and loss of CO (Scheme 18). 

The pyridine ylide method depends on the effective trapping of the carbene by pyridine. At high pyridine concentrations every carbene produced by the laser pulse will be trapped as ylide, and the ylide s absorbance (Ay) will saturate or reach a plateau (A °). The magnitude of A ° will vary with carbene structure it will decrease with both the increasing ease of carbene rearrangement and the intervention of RIES during carbene generation.3... 

This chapter will cover only reactions in which the isomerization to the allene starts from a stable molecule and not from a reactive intermediate generated in situ by reactions which are not isomerizations, such as the Doering-Moore-Skattebol reaction or free carbenes. Metallotropic rearrangements also will not be covered many of these reactions can be found in Chapter 9. Furthermore, the allene should be the final product of the reaction and not only a transient species leading to other products (see, for example, Chapters 6 and 20). 

Other possible carbene precursors (vicinal dihalides, peresters, ketenes, carbene adducts with stable hydrocarbons, etc.) cannot generally be used for in situ generation of carbenes, because the fragments are likely to recombine. However, they can be used, for example, in experiments involving pyrolysis or other forms of external carbene generation where the fragments get a chance to separate in the gas phase and become trapped in distant matrix sites. AU conceivable halo- and dihalocar-benes were made and smdied in this way (see, e.g., the 1993 review by Sander et al." ) However, such methods can only be applied to carbenes which resist thermal rearrangement to more stable products. 

In the course of studies of the insertion of carbenes, generated in the photolysis of spirocyclic diazarines, 528, into OH bonds (equation 314) it has been observed641 that formation of ethers from carbene 527 and ROH(D) is associated with partial rearrangement (equation 315). 

In contrast to the carbene and carbenoid chemistry of simple diazoacetic esters, that of a-silyl-a-diazoacetic esters has not yet been developed systematically [1]. Irradiation of ethyl diazo(trimethylsilyl)acetate in an alcohol affords products derived from 0-H insertion of the carbene intermediate, Wolff rearrangement, and carbene- silene rearrangement [2]. In contrast, photolysis of ethyl diazo(pentamethyldisilanyl)acetate in an inert solvent yields exclusively a ketene derived from a carbene->silene->ketene rearrangement [3], Photochemically generated ethoxycarbonyltrimethyl-silylcarbene cyclopropanates alkenes and undergoes insertion into aliphatic C-H bonds [4]. Copper-catalyzed and photochemically induced cyclopropenation of an alkyne with methyl diazo(trimethylsilyl)acetate has also been reported [5]. 

Scheme 6 Iron-catalyzed carbene generation/[2,3]sigmatropic rearrangement of propargyl sulfonium ylides...

The thermal decompositions of diazirines appear to be homogeneous, uni-molecular processes " . Cyclic diazirines decompose with a slightly smaller activation energy (Table 14) due to ring strain. Product distributions presumably result from intramolecular rearrangement of carbene intermediates, and the fact that the product ratios differ from those obtained on photolysis supports the hypothesis that the carbenes generated photolytically contain considerable excess vibrational energy. 

The carbene generated by photolysis of diazo compound 499 rearranges via phenyl migration to a short-lived phosphene 500, which with aldehydes or ketones gives [2-l-2]-cycloadducts (A -l,2-oxaphosphetanes (501 (80CB3303 81T1039). 

Similarly, carbene addition, rearrangement and 1,2-carbon-to-carbon migration are observed when cyclopropylphenylcarbene is generated by photolysis of cyclopropylphenyldiazomethane in the presence of 2-methylpropene. In addition to the expected cyclopropane, 2,2-dimethyl-l-phenylbicyclopropyl, phenylacetylene and 1-phenylcyclobutene are formed. The product distribution is very sensitive to the temperature at which the reaction is carried out. Cyc-lobutylphenylcarbene exhibits similar reactivity. ... 

Addition versus rearrangement of chloro(methyl)-, chloro(ethyl)-, benzyl(chloro)-, chlo-ro(methoxymethyl)- and chloro(isopropyl)carbene generated by photolytic or thermal decomposition of 3-alkyl-3-chloro-3//-diazirines has also been investigated.81 However, it is known that chloro(isopropyl)- or ie/7-butylchlorocarbene does not undergo addition to 2,3-dimethyl-but-2-ene, which is used as a carbene trap. Photolysis or thermolysis of 3-arylmethyl-3-chloro-3//-diazirines in the presence of an alkene has also been studied extensively.84 Addition of the ambiphilic benzylchlorocarbene82 to an alkene to give 1-benzyl-1-chlorocyclopropanes is usually accompanied by its rearrangement to co-chlorostyrene (1,2-hydride shift, for details see ref 83). This isomerization was seriously impeded when the decomposition of 3-benzyl-3-chloro-3//-diazirines was performed in the presence of an alkene,85 with 2,3-dimethylbut-2-ene only traces of co-chlorostyrene were observed.81,86 The results of reactions of benzylchlorocar-benes with some alkenes are collected in Table 6.85... 

Scheme 7. General method for the preparation of PAHs by insertion reactions of carbenes generated by the thermal acetylene to vinylidene-carbene rearrangement [53b, 54a]...

The effect of substituents on the temperature dependence of a-carbonyl-carbene reactivity has been examined using carbenes generated by low-temperature photolysis of methyl diazophenylacetate. A correction to the literature on the photoreaction of isopropylidene diazomalonate (98) with 1,3,3-trimethyl-cyclohexane (99) has been reported. The photoproduct, originally thought to be a cyclopropane derivative, has now been shown to be the cyclobutanone (100), the formation of which presumably involves a photo-Wolff rearrangement as illustrated in Scheme 11. Substituent effects observed in the product distribution of diazo-amide photochemistry have been ascribed to conformational factors the jS-lactam, oxindole, and Wolff rearrangement products appear to arise directly from the excited singlet state of the sym-Z form of the diazo-amide itself. 

Rearrangement of the carbenes generated by photoelimination of nitrogen from cyclic diazo-ketones is frequently accompanied by ring-contraction. This process has found extensive use in synthesis recent examples include the synthesis of the [7]paracyclophane ring system,6 4,8-dihydrodibenzo[cRing-contraction was not observed on irradiation of the unstable... 

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