Carbon-oxygen bonds mechanisms

Primary alcohols do not dehydrate as readily as secondary or tertiary alcohols and their dehydration does not involve a primary carbocation A proton is lost from the (3 carbon m the same step m which carbon-oxygen bond cleavage occurs The mechanism is E2... 

During the insertion mechanism, the metal is inserted into the carbon-oxygen bond. The insertion is promoted by a strong metal—oxygen interaction. It is thought that unreduced metal ions may play an important role in the insertion mechanism (electrophilic catalysis). The type of the catalyst, the method of preparation, and the additives can influence the concentration and stability of these ions. 

On the other hand, in cyclic ethers (alkene oxides, oxetans, tetrahydrofuran) and formals the reaction site is a carbon-oxygen bond, the oxygen atom is the most basic point, and, hence, cationic polymerization is possible. The same considerations apply to the polymerization of lactones Cherdron, Ohse and Korte showed that with very pure monomers polyesters of high molecular weight could be obtained with various cationic catalysts and syncatalysts, and proposed a very reasonable mechanism involving acyl fission of the ring [89]. 

Pliotolytic. Bussacchini et al. (1985) studied the photolysis (7, = 254 nm) of phenmedipham in ethanol, ethanol/water, and hexane as solvents. In their proposed free radical mechanism, homolysis of the carbon-oxygen bond of the carbamate linkage gave the following photoproducts 3-(hydroxylphenyl)carbamic acid methyl ester, m-toluidine, 2-hydroxy-4-aminomethyl benzoate, 3-hydroxy-5-aminomethyl benzoate, 2-amino-4-hydroxymethyl benzoate, and 2-amino-6-hydroxymethyl benzoate. 

In the discussion of the general base catalyzed addition step above (p. 120) the objection was raised that it was difficult to believe that general base catalysis would be necessary for the addition of water to so reactive a species as a protonated ester. An answer to this objection is implicit in the discussion above of the mechanism of hydrolysis of orthoesters. It appears that the protonated orthoester, which would be the initial product of the simple addition of a molecule of water to a protonated ester, is too reactive a species to exist in aqueous solution, and that carbon-oxygen bond-cleavage is concerted with the transfer of the proton to the orthoester. The formation of a protortated orthoester by the addition of a molecule of water to the conjugate acid of an ester will be even less likely, and it seems entirely reasonable, therefore, that the formation of the neutral orthoester, by a general base catalyzed process, should be the favoured mechanism. 

A facile synthesis of cyclobutylmethanols has been devised by reacting 2-ethoxy-5-alkyl-3,4-dihydro-2H-pyrans with aluminum alkyls (Scheme 149) (80TL4525). When (648) is reacted with triisobutylaluminum the cyclobutylmethanol (649) is formed quantitatively. While several mechanisms have been proposed for this process, initial rupture of the carbon-oxygen bond of the pyran ring to form an aluminum enolate, which then undergoes ring closure and reduction, appears to be most likely. 

In the second mechanism, B, the reaction proceeds in a single step. Attack of hydroxide ion at carbon occurs simultaneously with the loss of chloride ion that is, the carbon-oxygen bond is formed as the carbon-chlorine bond is broken. 

A somewhat more difficult question is that of the precise mechanism by which the carbonyl carbon-oxygen bond is cleaved. Scheme 8 illustrates three... 

It is, of course, not correct to treat the wave function of a polyatomic molecule as localized in the chromophoric group considered responsible for the optical absorption. The carbonyl group in aldehydes and ketones gives rise to absorption which extends from about 3430 A to about 2200 A (as well as to absorption at shorter wavelengths). Nevertheless the carbon-oxygen bond is never broken by absorption at these wavelengths. Frequently an adjacent bond is broken but often more complex processes occur. It is sometimes possible to describe these processes in terms of quantum mechanics but some of them should not be treated as direct dissociations. 

The breaking of the carbon-oxygen bond and the attachment of the 7- carbon atom to the ortho position must be simultaneous, and this step, rather than the enolization of the hydrogen, must be the rate-determining step. If the latter were the slow step, the reaction would be speeded up by dimethylaniline, and this is not observed. The cyclic mechanism accounts for the occurrence of inversion. 

Although the mechanisms with six-membered cyclic structures 131 and 135, 136 have striking similarities, it should be emphasized that 135 - 136 involve only proton transfers between oxygen atoms (but also the formation/dissociation of a carbon-oxygen bond), whereas in 131 a proton transfer from carbon to oxygen occurs. 

---