Carbonyl compounds, electron

Carbon-heteroatom bonds of a-substituents to a carbonyl function are cleaved at less cathodic potentials than those required in the absence of the carbonyl group. The polarographic reduction of these systems has been extensively studies in aqueous media. Tie half-wave potentials are also less negative than those of the non-substituted carbonyl compounds. Electron addition involves an interaction between the n -orbital of the carbonyl group and the o-orbital of the departing group. 

Griesbeck, A. G., Schieffer, S. Electron-transfer reactions of carbonyl compounds. Electron Transfer in Chemistry 200, 2,457-493. 

Given the fact that the catalytic AFC alkylation reactions of electron-rich aromatic rings with electrophilic reagents such as carbonyl compounds, electron-deficient alkenes, and compounds with carbon-carbon double bonds bearing a leaving group in the allylic position have been developed... 

Potassium ferrate, K2pe04, is a mild reagent for the oxidation of primary alcohols and primary alkylamines to aldehydes, and of secondary alcohols to ketones. lodonium nitrate, INO3, is reported to oxidize alcohols to carbonyl compounds electron-withdrawing groups adjacent to the alcohol carbon cause a marked decrease in reactivity olefinic alcohols undergo preferential electrophilic addition to the double bond. ... 

Wong S K, Hutchinson D A and Wan J K S 1973 Chemically induced dynamic electron polarization. II. A general theory for radicals produced by photochemical reactions of excited triplet carbonyl compounded. Chem. Phys. 58 985-9... 

In resonance terms electron delocalization map unsaturated carbonyl compounds IS represented by contributions from three principal resonance structures... 

The carbonyl group withdraws rr electron density from the double bond and both the carbonyl carbon and the p carbon are positively polarized Their greater degree of charge separation makes the dipole moments of a p unsaturated carbonyl compounds signifi cantly larger than those of comparable aldehydes and ketones... 

The diminished rr electron density m the double bond makes a p unsaturated aide hydes and ketones less reactive than alkenes toward electrophilic addition Electrophilic reagents—bromine and peroxy acids for example—react more slowly with the carbon-carbon double bond of a p unsaturated carbonyl compounds than with simple alkenes... 

On the other hand the polarization of electron density map unsaturated carbonyl compounds makes their p carbon atoms rather electrophilic Some chemical conse quences of this enhanced electrophilicity are described m the following section... 

Methacryhc acid and its ester derivatives are Ctfjy -unsaturated carbonyl compounds and exhibit the reactivity typical of this class of compounds, ie, Michael and Michael-type conjugate addition reactions and a variety of cycloaddition and related reactions. Although less reactive than the corresponding acrylates as the result of the electron-donating effect and the steric hindrance of the a-methyl group, methacrylates readily undergo a wide variety of reactions and are valuable intermediates in many synthetic procedures. 

AH ahphatic aldehydes and most ketones react to form cyanohydrins. The lower reactivity of ketones, relative to aldehydes, is attributed to a combination of electron-donating effects and increased steric hindrance of the second alkyl group in the ketones. The magnitude of the equiUbrium constants for the addition of hydrogen cyanide to a carbonyl group is a measure of the stabiUty of the cyanohydrin relative to the carbonyl compound plus hydrogen cyanide ... 

The initial bond formation between the -> ir excited carbonyl compound and an alkene can occur by interaction of the half-filled n -orbital of the [I CO] with the ir-system of the alkene, in a sense transferring a tt-electron to the -orbital and making a bond between an alkene carbon and the carbonyl oxygen. In this process (common for electron rich olefins) the plane formed by the alkene carbons and their four substituents is perpendicular to the plane of the carbonyl groups and its two substituents (Figure 1). In the... 

There is another possible mechanism for addition of organometallic reagents to carbonyl compounds. This involves a discrete electron-transfer step. °... 

The distinguishing feature of this mechanism is the second step, in which an electron is transferred fixim the organometallic reagent to the carbonyl compound to give the radical... 

Two classes of charged radicals derived from ketones have been well studied. Ketyls are radical anions formed by one-electron reduction of carbonyl compounds. The formation of the benzophenone radical anion by reduction with sodium metal is an example. This radical anion is deep blue in color and is veiy reactive toward both oxygen and protons. Many detailed studies on the structure and spectral properties of this and related radical anions have been carried out. A common chemical reaction of the ketyl radicals is coupling to form a diamagnetic dianion. This occurs reversibly for simple aromatic ketyls. The dimerization is promoted by protonation of one or both of the ketyls because the electrostatic repulsion is then removed. The coupling process leads to reductive dimerization of carbonyl compounds, a reaction that will be discussed in detail in Section 5.5.3 of Part B. 

Perfluorinated carbonyl compounds, especially hexafluoroacetone, are highly electron-deficient species and react vigorously with a wide variety of HX nucleophiles The reaction of these ketones and of most polyfluonnated imines toward nucleophiles can be generahzed by the scheme shown m equation 1... 

The dienophilic character of imines parallels that of carbonyl compounds Consequently, electron deficient imtnes are the most reactive dienophiles of this class, particularly those having C perfluoroalkyl [5, 146, 150, 228], /V-acyl [/2i5 127], or A/-sulfonyl groups [148, 229 230]... 

Since Stork et al. introduced as a new synthetic method the alkylation and acylation of carbonyl compounds via enamines, this class of compounds has been the subjeet of intensive studies 1-3). The exceptional physical and chemical behavior of the enamine structure can be ascribed to resonance by conjugation of the unshared pair of electrons of the nitrogen atom with the 77 electrons of the double bond ... 

The Pictet-Spengler reaction is an acid-catalyzed intramolecular cyclization of an intermediate imine of 2-arylethylamine, formed by condensation with a carbonyl compound, to give 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline derivatives. This condensation reaction has been studied under acid-catalyzed and superacid-catalyzed conditions, and a linear correlation had been found between the rate of the reaction and the acidity of the reaction medium. Substrates with electron-donating substituents on the aromatic ring cyclize faster than the corresponding unsubstituted compounds, supporting the idea that the cyclization process is involved in the rate-determining step of the reaction. 

However, the 0-alkyl derivatives are potentially unstable with respect to thermal elimination of a carbonyl compound and consequent reduction to the corresponding lactam. A combination of steric and electronic factors may permit this decomposition, i.e., 133 -a- 134, to occur at quite moderate temperatures. The 0-methyl derivative of the benzalphthalimidine (132) undergoes slow loss of formaldehyde at 177° (Ti/a in dimethyl sulfoxide 40 minutes), but this elimination is much faster in certain thiohydroxamic acid derivatives, e.g., 135, which lose benzaldehyde readily at 139° in dimethyl sulfoxide (T1/2 6 minutes). The outstanding example of this decomposition, however,... 

Active carbonyl compounds such as benzaldehyde attack the electron-rich double bond in DTDAFs to give a dipolar adduct, which immediately undergoes dissociation with formation of two molecules of 146 (64BSF2857 67LA155).Tlie existence of by-products such as benzoin led to the synthetic application of thiazolium salts in the acyloin condensation. For example, replacement of the classic cyanide ion by 3-benzyl-4-methyl-5(/3-hydroxyethyl) thiazolium salts allowed the benzoin-type condensation to take place in nonaqueous solvents (76AGE639) (Scheme 57). 

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