Carbonyl compounds organolithiums

The reactions of organolithium compounds with carbonyl compounds, including carbon dioxide, may be interpreted as follows ... 

Organolithium and organomagnesium reagents are highly reactive toward most carbonyl compounds. With aldehydes and ketones, the tetrahedral adduct is stable, and alcohols are isolated after protonation of the adduct, which is an alkoxide ion. 

Alkyltriphenylphosphonium halides are only weakly acidic, and a strong base must be used for deprotonation. Possibilities include organolithium reagents, the anion of dimethyl sulfoxide, and amide ion or substituted amide anions, such as LDA or NaHMDS. The ylides are not normally isolated, so the reaction is carried out either with the carbonyl compound present or with it added immediately after ylide formation. Ylides with nonpolar substituents, e.g., R = H, alkyl, aryl, are quite reactive toward both ketones and aldehydes. Ylides having an a-EWG substituent, such as alkoxycarbonyl or acyl, are less reactive and are called stabilized ylides. 

Organolithium reagents (Rli) react with carbonyl compounds in the same way as Grignard reagents. 

One of the important new directions in the study of addition reactions of organozinc compounds to aldehydes is the use of ionic liquids. Usually, application of these compounds in reactions with common organometallic reagents has a serious problem ionic solvents are usually reactive toward them, particularly Grignard and organolithium derivatives. It has been recently reported that carbonyl compounds react with allylzinc bromide formed in situ from allyl bromide and zinc in the ionic liquid 3-butyl-l-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, [bmim][BF4].285 Another important finding is that the more reactive ZnEt2 alkylates aldehydes in a number of ionic liquids at room temperature.286 The best yields (up to 96%) were obtained in A-butylpyridinium tetrafluoroborate, [bpy][BF4] (Scheme 107). 

Organolithium compounds are highly reactive and have been used in a variety of organic transformations. A major problem in the development of catalytic asymmetric conjugate additions of organolithium reagents to a,/3-unsaturated carbonyl compounds is that the high reactivity of RLi may cause both low chemoselectivity (1,2- vs. 1,4-addition) and low enantioselectivity. 

As emphasized above, the practical utility of organocerium compounds is to circumvent the problems which are faced with the corresponding Grignard and organolithium reagents because of their inability to react effectively with sterically demanding carbonyl compounds and carbon-heteroatom unsaturated bonds which have acidic a-protons. Some of the latest examples are shown below. 

The chemical behavior of heteroatom-substituted vinylcarbene complexes is similar to that of a,(3-unsaturated carbonyl compounds (Figure 2.17) [206]. It is possible to perform Michael additions [217,230], 1,4-addition of cuprates [151], additions of nucleophilic radicals [231], 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions [232,233], inter-[234-241] or intramolecular [220,242] Diels-Alder reactions, as well as Simmons-Smith- [243], sulfur ylide- [244] or diazomethane-mediated [151] cyclopropanati-ons of the vinylcarbene C-C double bond. The treatment of arylcarbene complexes with organolithium reagents ean lead via conjugate addition to substituted 1,4-cyclohexadien-6-ylidene complexes [245]. 

The most important application of organolithium reagents is their nucleophilic addition to carbonyl compounds. One of the simplest cases would be the reaction with the molecule CO itself, whose products are stable at room temperature. Recently, it was shown that a variety of RLi species are able to react with CO or f-BuNC in a newly developed liquid xenon (LXe) cell . LXe was used as reaction medium because it suppresses electron-transfer reactions, which are known to complicate the reaction . In this way the carbonyllithium and acyllithium compounds, as well as the corresponding isolobal isonitrile products, could be characterised by IR spectroscopy for the first time. 

The reaction shown in Scheme 39 was also performed starting from a chiral carbamoyl chloride (91, Y = O) derived from (f )-iV-methyl-iV-(l-phenylethyl)amine, in order to study the possible asymmetric induction using prochiral carbonyl compounds. Thus, with pivalaldehyde or benzaldehyde the mixture of diastereomers obtained was ca 1 1. This behavior was also observed with other chiral functionalized organolithium compounds ". ... 

Another type of sp -hybridized S-oxido functionahzed organolithium compounds has been easily prepared from chloroacetic acid (149). After a double deprotonation with lithium diisopropylamide in THF at —78°C, a DTBB catalyzed (5%) hthiation in the presence of different carbonyl compounds as electrophiles at the same temperature followed by final hydrolysis afforded the expected S-hydroxy acids 151. The corresponding intermediate 150 was probably involved in the process (Scheme 54)" . 

By a DTBB-catalyzed (5%) lithiation of chlorinated unsaturated amines 191 in the presence of a carbonyl compound as electrophile, the final hydrolysis afforded 192 as a Z/E mixture of diastereomers (Scheme 66). In this process, the corresponding sp -hybridized functionalized organolithium intermediate is probably involved. 

The only way to introduce two different electrophilic fragments in compounds such as 508 is to have a starting material with different halogens. This is the case with 510, which could be lithiated (bromide-lithium exchange) with t-butyllithium in THF at — 100°C giving intermediates 511, which reacted with a carbonyl compound R R CO and, after naphthalene-catalyzed lithiation, gave the new functionalized organolithium intermediate 512. Final reaction with 3-pentanone followed by hydrolysis yielded mixed products 513 (Scheme 142) °. 

The competition between insertion and hydrogen transfer is also crucial to the selectivity of the reaction of aluminium alkyls with carbonyl compounds. Aluminium alkyls, like organolithium compounds and Grignard reagents, can add to aldehydes and ketones to form secondary or tertiary alcohols, respectively. If the aluminium alkyl has a j -hydrogen, however, reduction of the carbonyl compound is a common side reaction, and can even become the main reaction [16]. Most authors seem to accept that reduction involves direct j5-hydrogen transfer to ketone. 

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