Carboxylic acid chlorides reactivity with nucleophiles

Acy 1-4-amino-1,5-dihydro-2-pyrrolones (6) (type Z in Scheme 1) possess the features of cyclic enaminediones. The push-pull-7r system decreases the nucleophilicity of the amino group. Therefore N-acylation with carboxylic acid chlorides requires relatively drastic conditions (dioxane, 100°C, K2C03). In particular, the reaction of the highly reactive DMF-acetal 8 to formamidine 9 succeeds only while refluxing in benzene (87TH1). (See Fig. 3.)... 

Anhydrides of carboxylic acids are, as the name suggests, the product of two carboxylic acid units that couple together with loss of water. It is possible to convert carboxylic acids directly to anhydrides, but more commonly they are prepared from acid chlorides. Once an acid chloride has been prepared, it is highly reactive in the presence of a variety of nucleophiles, even relatively weak nucleophiles. In Section 20.2, for example, the reaction of an acid chloride with water gave the parent carboxylic acid. Acid chlorides react with other carboxylic acids to form anhydrides where the acid behaves as a nucleophile. 

Acid halides are among the most reactive of carboxylic acid derivatives and can be converted into many other kinds of compounds by nucleophilic acyl substitution mechanisms. The halogen can be replaced by -OH to yield an acid, by —OCOR to yield an anhydride, by -OR to yield an ester, or by -NH2 to yield an amide. In addition, the reduction of an acid halide yields a primary alcohol, and reaction with a Grignard reagent yields a tertiary alcohol. Although the reactions we ll be discussing in this section are illustrated only for acid chlorides, similar processes take place with other acid halides. 

Acid chlorides are the most reactive carboxylic acid derivatives, and easily converted to acid anhydrides, esters and amides via nucleophilic acyl substitutions (see Section 5.5.5). Acid chlorides are sufficiently reactive with H2O, and quite readily hydrolysed to carboxylic acid (see Section 5.6.1). 

The combination of addition and elimination reactions has the overall effect of substituting one nucleophile for another in this case, substituting an alcohol for water. The rate of these nucleophilic substitution reactions is determined by the ease with which the elimination step occurs. As a rule, the best leaving groups in nucleophilic substitutions reactions are weak bases. The most reactive of the carboxylic acid derivatives are the acyl chlorides because the leaving group is a chloride ion, which is a very weak base (ATb KT20). 

In an opposite manner to bases such as 1 and 2 in terms of reactivity, polymer-supported tosyl chloride equivalent 14 is able to capture alcohols as polymer-bound sulfonates 15, which are released as secondary amines, sulfides and alkylated imidazoles with primary amines, thiols and imidazoles as nucleophiles in a substitution process (Scheme 6) [24]. This technique has further been extended for the preparation of tertiary amines [25] and esters [26]. Excess of amine was scavenged by polymer-supported isocyanate 16 [27, 28] while excess of carboxylic acid was removed by treatment with aminomethylated polystyrene 17. 

Camphor-10-sulfonic acid (1) is available in large quantities in both enantiomeric forms. In only 3 steps the cyclic sulfonamide 2 (sultam) can be synthesized, which can be acylated with acid chlorides after deprotonation with sodium hydride (Scheme 1) [1, 2]. The resulting amides 3 are considerable more reactive towards nucleophiles than the corresponding carboxylic esters and the a,/ -unsaturated derivatives undergo, with excellent selectivities, Diels-Alder reactions or Michael additions under mild conditions. Al-... 

Although somewhat less reactive than acid chlorides, anhydrides nonetheless readily react with most nucleophiles to form substitution products. Nucleophilic substitution reactions of anhydrides are no different than the reactions of other carboxylic acid derivatives, even though anhydrides contain two carbonyl groups. Nucleophilic attack occurs at one carbonyl group, while the second carbonyl becomes part of the leaving group. 

An acyl transfer agent which can be used for the synthesis of acid anhydrides is obtained from the reaction of an acid chloride with 4-benzylpyridine (equation 24). In this way benzoic acid anhydride and cinnamic acid anhydride were obtained in 72% and 57% yields, respectively. As the intermediate, 1-acyl-4-benzylidene-l,4-dihydropyridines, can be isolated, Ais procedure should be well suited for the preparation of mixed anhydrides. Mixed aromatic and aliphatic anhydrides can be prepared with 2-ben-zoylthio-l-methylpyridinium chloride and salts of carboxylic acids. These reactions are carried out in aqueous solution. Iliey make use of the high reactivity of esters of thiocarboxylic esters towards nucleophiles. The mixed anhydrides of benzoic acid with 3-phenylpropanoic acid, phenoxyacetic acid, isobu-tyric acid, p-toluic acid and cinnamic acid were formed in 82, 79,61,91 and 66% yields, respectively. 

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