Dicarbonyl reaction with nitrogen oxides

Many of the classical methods grew out of the earliest synthesis of imidazole, which was achieved in 1858 by Debus [1] when he allowed glyoxal, formaldehyde and ammonia to react together. Although the earliest modifications of this method used a-diketones or a-ketoaldehydes as substrates [2, by the 1930s it was well established that a-hydroxycarbonyl compounds could serve equally well, provided that a mild oxidizer (e.g. ammoniacal copper(ll) acetate, citrate or sulfate) was incorporated [3. A further improvement was to use ammonium acetate in acetic acid as the nitrogen source. All of these early methods have deficiencies. There are problems associated with the synthesis of a wide range of a-hydroxyketones or a-dicarbonyls, yields are invariably rather poor, and more often than not mixtures of products are formed. There are, nevertheless, still applications to the preparation of simple 4-alkyl-, 4,5-dialkyl(diaryl)- and 2,4,5-trialkyl(triaryl)imidazoles. For example, pymvaldehyde can be converted quite conveniently into 4-methylimidazole or 2,4-dimethylimidazole. However, reversed aldol reactions of pyruvaldehyde in ammoniacal solution lead to other imidazoles (e.g. 2-acetyl-4-methylimidazole) as minor products [4]. Such... 

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