Carbohydrates nitrate esters

A mixture of anhydrous lithium nitrate and trifluoroacetic anhydride in acetonitrile in the presence of sodium carbonate has been used to convert alcohols to nitrate esters for a range of peptide, carbohydrate and steroid substrates. Yields are good to high but products need puritication to remove trifluoroacetate ester impurities, which can be signiflcant in the absence of the carbonate. A similar system used for the nitration of electron-rich aromatic heterocycles employs trifluoroacetic anhydride with ammonium or potassium nitrate. ... 

Voelter and co-workers synthesized the nitrate esters of some carbohydrates by treating the corresponding trifluoromethanesulfonate (triflate) esters with tetrabutylammonium nitrate. Yields were generally excellent. The same authors describe a one-pot process for the synthesis... 

An analogous scheme has been proposed to explain the formation of the inverted alcohol (in some cases in 100% yield) observed during photolysis of nitrate esters of carbohydrates. ... 

The most important of the carbohydrate esters of nitric acid are the polysaccharide nitrates, particularly cellulose nitrate or nitrocellulose (NC) and starch nitrate ( nitrostarch ) which is much less used. Nitric esters prepared from other sugars such as saccharose and lactose are not of any importance as explosives. 

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