Carbonyl disproportionation

In 1952 Wender and co-workers proposed (244) that dicobalt octa-carbonyl disproportionates in the presence of a Lewis base (B) to yield a cobalt(II) carbonylcobaltate( — I) salt. 

Metal carbonyl disproportionation reactions. The following example illustrates this method ... 

Polynuclear anionic metal carbonyl compounds are usually prepared by reduction reactions of metal carbonyls M(CO) with such reducing agents as the alkali metals, NaBH4 in ethers, hydrocarbons, liquid ammonia, and similar solvents [see, for example, reactions (2.54), (2.55), (2.84), (2.89), (2.95>-(2.102), and (2.108)-(2.113)]. In alkali medium the metal carbonyls may be reduced by certain solvents (e.g., alcohols) or by the CO ligand itself, and in the presence of Lewis bases the carbonyls disproportionate to give anionic clusters. The mixed metal clusters containing platinum and rhodium are formed by reduction reactions of chloro complexes... 

The nature of the solvent plays an important role. Metal carbonyls disproportionate in basic solvents (e.g., in DMF) to form ionic complexes in which metal atoms have a 2+ formal charge (scheme 10). The product compositions of identified by IR spectroscopy varied with the extent of the substitution by carbonyl groups ... 

Chemica.1 Properties. Reviews of carbonyl sulfide chemistry are available (18,23,24). Carbonyl sulfide is a stable compound and can be stored under pressure ia steel cylinders as compressed gas ia equiUbrium with Hquid. At ca 600°C carbonyl sulfide disproportionates to carbon dioxide and carbon disulfide at ca 900°C it dissociates to carbon monoxide and sulfur. It bums with a blue flame to carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Carbonyl sulfide reacts... 

The coordination chemistry of NO is often compared to that of CO but, whereas carbonyls are frequently prepared by reactions involving CO at high pressures and temperatures, this route is less viable for nitrosyls because of the thermodynamic instability of NO and its propensity to disproportionate or decompose under such conditions (p. 446). Nitrosyl complexes can sometimes be made by transformations involving pre-existing NO complexes, e.g. by ligand replacement, oxidative addition, reductive elimination or condensation reactions (reductive, thermal or photolytic). Typical examples are ... 

Carbonyl compounds can undergo various photochemical reactions among the most important are two types of reactions that are named after Norrish. The term Norrish type I fragmentation refers to a photochemical reaction of a carbonyl compound 1 where a bond between carbonyl group and an a-carbon is cleaved homolytically. The resulting radical species 2 and 3 can further react by decarbonylation, disproportionation or recombination, to yield a variety of products. 

Photochemical disproportionation of metal-metal bonded carbonyl dimers. A. E. Stiegman and D. R. Tyler, Coord. Chem. Rev., 1985, 63, 217 (59). 

More recently Hand et al. (ref. 9) have studied the decomposition reaction of N-chloro-a-amino acid anions in neutral aqueous solution, where the main reaction products are carbon dioxide, chloride ion and imines (which hydrolyze rapidly to amine and carbonyl products). They found that the reaction rate constant of decarboxylation was independent of pH, so they ruled out a proton assisted decarboxylation mechanism, and the one proposed consists of a concerted decarboxylation. For N-bromoamino acids decomposition in the pH interval 9-11 a similar concerted mechanism was proposed by Antelo et al. (ref. 10), where the formation of a nitrenium ion (ref. 11) can be ruled out because it is not consistent with the experimental results. Antelo et al. have also established that when the decomposition reaction takes place at pH < 9, the disproportionation reaction of the N-Br-amino acid becomes important, and the decomposition goes through the N,N-dibromoamino acid. This reaction is also important for N-chloroamino compounds but at more acidic pH values, because the disproportionation reaction... 

Apart from this mechanistic hypothesis, another scenario, with a ferrate complex as intermediate, may be possible. In 1928, Hieber discovered that Fe(CO)5 78 underwent a disproportionation in the presence of ethylenediamine 122 [97-101]. Depending on the reaction temperature, different ferrate complexes were formed that incorporated a [Fe(en)3] cation (en = ethylenediamine) and mono-, di- or trinuclear ferrate anions (Scheme 32) [102-107]. As the reaction discussed above is also performed with amines at high temperatures, these ferrates may well be involved in the catalytic cycle of the carbonylation discussed above. 

Similarly, treatment of a hexane solution of (77-C5Me5)2TiCl with CO at room temperature gave the thermally unstable adduct (17-C5Me5)2Ti(CO)(Cl) (52) as evidenced by again a high energy metal carbonyl band at 2000 cm-1 (98). Complex 52 slowly disproportionated at... 

A number of metal carbonyls undergo disproportionation reactions in the presence of other coordinating ligands. For example, in the presence of amines, Fe(CO)5 reacts as follows ... 

Formally, in each of these cases the disproportionation produces a positive metal ion and a metal ion in a negative oxidation state. The carbonyl ligands will be bound to the softer metal species, the anion the nitrogen donor ligands (hard Lewis bases) will be bound to the harder metal species, the cation. These disproportionation reactions are quite useful in the preparation of a variety of carbonylate complexes. For example, the [Ni2(CO)6]2 ion can be prepared by the reaction... 

Mechanistic evidence indicates 450,451> that the triplet enone first approaches the olefinic partner to form an exciplex. The next step consists in the formation of one of the new C—C bonds to give a 1,4-diradical, which is now the immediate precursor of the cyclobutane. Both exciplex and 1,4-diradical can decay resp. disproportionate to afford ground state enone and alkene. Eventually oxetane formation, i.e. addition of the carbonyl group of the enone to an olefin is also observed452. Although at first view the photocycloaddition of an enone to an alkene would be expected to afford a variety of structurally related products, the knowledge of the influence of substituents on the stereochemical outcome of the reaction allows the selective synthesis of the desired annelation product in inter-molecular reactions 453,454a b). As for intramolecular reactions, the substituent effects are made up by structural limitations 449). 

It can be seen that primary and secondary R02 radicals disproportionate with the participation of the a-C—H bond. This explains why the substitution of D in the a-position for H retards the recombination of R02 [/tn//tD =1.9 for ethylbenzene, h/ d = 2.1 for styrene, and h/ d=1-37 for diphenylmethane [179]). Because of this, R02 radicals of unsaturated compounds with a double bond in the a-position to the peroxyl free valence disproportionate more rapidly than structurally analogous aliphatic peroxyl radicals (at 300 K, 2kt = 2x 107 and 3.8 x 106 L mol-1 s-1 for R02 radicals of cyclohexene and cyclohexane, respectively [180]). Among the products of secondary peroxyl radicals disproportionation, carbonyl compound and alcohol were found in a ratio of 1 1 at room temperature (in experiments with ethylbenzene [181], tetralin [103], and cyclohexane [182-184],... 

The CL that accompanied the disproportionation of secondary and primary peroxyl radicals (see later 2.5.4). The R1 R2C 000 biradical formed in the cage is a predecessor of exited carbonyl compound and singlet dioxygen. 

Ozone induces CL in the oxidized hydrocarbons (RH) by disproportionation of the formed peroxyl radicals [113,120,121]. This reaction produces a carbonyl compound in the triplet state, which is the source of luminescence. 

Vardanyan [65,66] discovered the phenomenon of CL in the reaction of peroxyl radicals with the aminyl radical. In the process of liquid-phase oxidation, CL results from the disproportionation reactions of primary and secondary peroxyl radicals, giving rise to trip-let-excited carbonyl compounds (see Chapter 2). The addition of an inhibitor reduces the concentration of peroxyl radicals and, hence, the rate of R02 disproportionation and the intensity of CL. As the inhibitor is consumed in the oxidized hydrocarbon the initial level of CL is recovered. On the other hand, the addition of primary and secondary aromatic amines to chlorobenzene containing some amounts of alcohols, esters, ethers, or water enhances the CL by 1.5 to 7 times [66]. This effect is probably due to the reaction of peroxyl radicals with the aminyl radical, since the addition of phenol to the reaction mixture under these conditions must extinguish CL. Indeed, the fast exchange reaction... 

In homogeneous solutions NO disproportionation maybe promoted by transition metal complexes, and a variety of mechanisms seem to be available owing to the many possible modes of coordination. One example is the reaction of NO with nickel carbonyl shown in Eq. (35) (76),... 

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