Carbon monoxide nucleophilic addition

The rate-determining step in this process is the oxidative addition of methyl iodide to 1. Within the operating window of the process the reaction rate is independent of the carbon monoxide pressure and independent of the concentration of methanol. The methyl species 2 formed in reaction (2) cannot be observed under the reaction conditions. The methyl iodide intermediate enables the formation of a methyl rhodium complex methanol is not sufficiently electrophilic to carry out this reaction. As for other nucleophiles, the reaction is much slower with methyl bromide or methyl chloride as the catalyst component. 

Figure 15.8 a simple example is presented of a subsequent insertion of CO and methanolysis of the palladium acyl intermediate [14], This is not a very common reaction, because both the ligand requirements and the redox conditions for Wacker and carbonylation chemistry are not compatible. For insertion reactions one would use cis coordinating diphosphines or diimines, which makes the palladium centre more electron-rich and thus the nucleophilic attack in the Wacker part of the scheme will be slowed down. In addition, the oxidants present may lead to catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide. 

The formation of the active catalyst can be retarded with high carbon monoxide partial pressure. High CO partial pressure leads to more CO in solution which competes with the ligand over the tricarbonyl species, Ni(C0)3, and forms the inactive nickel tetracarbonyl. The active complex stability was retained by increasing the promoter concentration. The complex formed between nickel and promoters is more stable than Ni(C0)4. In addition, promoters may impart higher electron density to the central atom and increase its nucleophilic character towards methyl iodide. 

Substitution of a carbon monoxide ligand of complexes, such as 1, by the more electron-donating triphenylphosphane group (see Section 1.1.1.3.4.1.3.) provides chiral monophos-phane complexes, such as 3. Monophosphane complexes in general lack sufficient electrophilic-ity to react with amines or thiols, but react readily with amine anions at the /J-position, producing enolate anions such as 4, which may be quenched stereoselectively at the a-carbon by electrophiles46 (see Section 1.1.1.3.4.1.3.). The conformational and stereochemical issues involved are essentially identical to those already discussed in this section for the 1,4-additions of carbon nucleophiles. 

Other additions, such as addition of alkyl halides and carbonyl compounds, are discussed in Chapter 5, whereas Chapter 7 covers addition reactions involving carbon monoxide (hydroformylation, carboxylations). Hydrogen addition is discussed in Chapter 11. The nucleophilic addition of organometallics to multiple bonds is of great significance in the anionic polymerization of alkenes and dienes and is treated in Chapter 13. 

A series of rapid microwave-mediated ester syntheses using Mo(CO)6 as the carbon monoxide source were published in 200374. In this paper, a range of valuable ester-protected acids (butyl-, benzyl- and trimethylsilylethyl esters) were smoothly produced both in solution (Scheme 2.32) and on solid phase (TentaGel S RAM-resin, Scheme 2.33) after 15-20 min of single-mode microwave irradiation. The use of DMAP as a nucleophilic additive increased the product yields slightly. Unfortunately, the sterically hindered ferf-butanol furnished little or no product formation at all. 

The concept of in situ liberation of carbon monoxide would be even more attractive if a metal-free material could serve as the carbon monoxide source. In the ideal carbonylation method, the organic solvent itself could be exploited for controlled generation of carbon monoxide. In 2002, Wan et al. addressed this issue and developed a microwave-promoted carbamoylation process based on the commonly used solvent dimethylformamide (DMF) as the carbon monoxide precursor75. Firstly, it was discovered that aryl dimethyl amides were accessible from the corresponding bromides in the presence of a nucleophilic catalyst, imidazole (Scheme 2.34). Secondly, tertiary benzamides other than dimethylamides were synthesised by addition of 3 equiv of an external amine (Scheme 2.34). 

Reactions of alkenes and alkynes that generate a carbon-metal bond by nucleophilic addition to a metal ir-complex and subsequently undergo carbon monoxide insertion to yield a carbonyl product are... 

Swern oxidations produce the quite unreactive side compounds carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, dimethyl sulfide and an amine hydrochloride. Therefore, it is very often possible to perform the in situ addition of a nucleophile to the aldehyde or ketone, resulting from the oxidation. This is particularly useful when the aldehyde or ketone is difficult to isolate, because of possessing an unusually high reactivity. 

Addition of nucleophiles to a carbon monoxide ligand of pentacarbonyliron provides anionic acyliron intermediates which can be trapped by electrophiles (H+ or R—X) to furnish aldehydes or ketones [18]. However, carbonyl insertion into alkyl halides using iron carbonyl complexes is more efficiently achieved with disodium tetracarbonylferrate (Collman s reagent) and provides unsymmetrical ketones (Scheme 1.2) [19, 20]. Collman s reagent is extremely sensitive towards air and moisture, but offers a great synthetic potential as carbonyl transfer reagent. It can be prepared by an in situ procedure starting from Fe(CO)5 and Na-naphthalene [20]. 

We have already established that the carbene carbon is an electrophilic center and, hence, it should be very easily attacked by nucleophiles. In most reactions we believe that the first reaction step probably involves attachment of a nucleophile to the carbene carbon. In some cases, for instance with several phosphines (49) and tertiary amines (50), such addition products are isolable analytically pure under certain conditions (1 in Fig. 3). For the second step there exists the possibility that the nucleophilic agent may substitute a carbon monoxide in the complex with preservation of the carbene ligand (2 in Fig. 3). One can also very formally think of the carbene complex as an ester type of system [X=C(R )OR with X = M(CO)j instead of X = 0], because the oxygen atom as well as the metal atom in the M (CO) 6 residue are each missing 2 electrons for attainment of an inert gas configuration. So, it is not surprising that the... 

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