Complexes, alkyne-metal Lewis acid-base

The reactivity of the cationic Zr complexes is a direct consequence of their Lewis acidity see Lewis Acids Bases) (i) various substitution reactions can occur into the Zr-solvent weak bond, (ii) unsatnrated substrates (CO, alkenes, alkynes, or ketones) insert into the Zr-C bond, potentially leading to polymerization reactions (see Section 8.2), (iii) new organic ligands obtained after reaction in the coordination sphere of the metal can be spontaneously released by /3-H elimination see -Hydride Elimination), or (iv) C-H bond activation of suitable ligands can occur. 

The skeletal rearrangements are cycloisomerization processes which involve carbon-carbon bond cleavage. These reactions have witnessed a tremendous development in the last decade, and this chemistry has been recently reviewed.283 This section will be devoted to 7T-Lewis acid-catalyzed processes and will not deal, for instance, with genuine enyne metathesis processes involving carbene complex-catalyzed processes pioneered by Katz284 and intensely used nowadays with Ru-based catalysts.285 By the catalysis of 7r-Lewis acids, all these reactions generally start with a metal-promoted electrophilic activation of the alkyne moiety, a process well known for organoplatinum... 

This observation is not related to traces of base or acid from the silver salts used since control experiments mled out this possibility. It was known from the literature that the 5-exo-dig versus 6-endo-dig cyclization mode could depend on the nature of the carbonyl group,56 57 of the alkyne substituent,58 59 and of the nature60 61 and oxidation state62 of the metallic source used. Also, work from Yamamoto25 demonstrated the importance of both a- and Jt-Lewis acidity properties of silver(I) complexes. Therefore, depending on the silver salt used, two mechanistic pathways were proposed (pathways A and B, Scheme 5.15). 

The cycloaddition of carbon-heteroatom imsaturated bonds to alkynes is a versatile method for the construction of six-membered heterocyclic molecular frameworks such as pyridine and pyran, which are widely distributed in natural products and pharmaceutical drugs. In the past few decades, transition-metal-catalyzed cycloaddition has emerged as apowerful method for the synthesis of structurally diverse heterocyclic compounds [1], Nickel complexes are the most significant transition-metal-based catalysts because as opposed to divalent nickel, which shows ir-Lewis acid behavior toward carbon-carbon unsaturated bonds, zero-valent nickel shows nucleophilic behavior toward carbon-heteroatom unsaturated bonds, thereby facilitating the formation of heteronickelacycles, which are key intermediates for heterocycle synthesis... 

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