Oxygen reaction with dienes

Conjugated dienes react with oxygen under the influence of light to give cyclic peroxides 76.77B The reaction has mostly779 been applied to cyclic dienes.780 The scope extends to certain aromatic compounds,781 e.g.,... 

It was shown that the relative contribution of the above three termination steps at oxygen pressures from O to 760 torr is markedly dependent upon the structure of a radical. For instance, for oxidation of model hydrocarbon, 2,6-dimethylhepta-2,5-diene the ratio of RO 2 + R02 and R02 + R reactions is only 1 1 even at the oxygen pressure 760 torr. For aliphatic alkyl radicals (primary, secondary, or tertiary), the rate of reaction with oxygen is very fast and for the most of industrially produced polymers the quadratic termination step will include almost exclusively the reaction of two peroxy radicals. In a bulk of a polymer, however, the restricted diffusion of oxygen may bring about that the reaction R + R02 may become decisive. 

The triplet sensitizer may react with the 02 triplet or an oxidizable reactant (Figure 6.10), eg with alkenes, dienes, and aromatic and other unsaturated organic compounds. For many sensitizers the reaction with oxygen is so efficient that the former process is favoured over the latter [125]. 

Only a few cyclic dialkyl peroxides have been prepared by reaction with hydrogen peroxide. The large class formed by the endoperoxides, most of which are prepared by diene synthesis with oxygen, is discussed in Section IV. 

The autoxidation of 1,3-dienes is generally of minor importance for the synthesis of cyclic peroxides, the principal route to which is the photooxidation of 1,3-dienes. For this process, a sensitizer must be added in the case of low molecular weight 1,3-dienes and the 1,3-dienes of the terpene and steroid series. No sensitizer is required in the photooxidation of condensed aromatic hydrocarbons. These reactions may be regarded as diene syntheses with oxygen as the dienophile.165 A... 

The reaction is somewhat limited in scope because cyclobutadimerization is a potentially competing reaction for substrates which are ionizable but not sterically hindered, and conjugated dienes react with oxygen under these same conditions to give 1,4-endoperoxides (vide infra). The reaction is best carried out using the more potent, hexabromo salt at -78 °C, and has been found to be incompletely stereospecific. Consequently, a distonic cation radical intermediate has been postulated to play a role in the mechanism (Scheme 14). 

Thioketals are readily formed by acid-catalyzed reaction with ethane-dithiol. Selective thioketal formation is achieved at C-3 in the presence of a 6-ketone by carrying out the boron trifluoride catalyzed reaction in diluted medium. Selective protection of the 3-carbonyl group as a thioketal has been effected in high yield with A" -3,17-diketones, A" -3,20-diketones and A" -3,l 1,17-triones in acetic acid at room temperature in the presence of p-toluenesulfonic acid. In the case of thioketals the double bond remains in the 4,5-position. This result is attributed to the greater nucleophilicity of sulfur as compared to oxygen, which promotes closure of intermediate (66) to the protonated cyclic mercaptal (67) rather than elimination to the 3,5-diene [cf. ketal (70) via intermediates (68) and (69)]." " ... 

The mechanism of the cycloaddition reaction of benzaldehyde 2a with Danishefsky s diene 3a catalyzed by aluminum complexes has been investigated theoretically using semi-empirical calculations [14]. It was found that the reaction proceeds as a step-wise cycloaddition reaction with the first step being a nucleophilic-like attack of Danishefsky s diene 2a on the coordinated carbonyl compound leading to an aldol-like intermediate which is stabilized by interaction of the cation with the oxygen atom of the Lewis acid. The next step is the ring-closure step, giving the cycloaddition product. 

Thiophene 1,1-dioxide (61) is too unstable to isolate and dimerizes with loss of S02 to give 3a, 7a-dihydrobenzothiophene 1,1-dioxide (172) in 34%113. However, alkyl-substituted thiophene 1,1-dioxides can serve as dienes in the Diels-Alder reaction, since the aromatic properties of the thiophene nucleus are lost completely and the n-electrons of the sulfur atom are used for forming the bond with oxygen. The sulfones 173-178 are found to react with two moles of maleic anhydride at elevated temperature to give bicyclic anhydrides114. Thus, at high reaction temperature, S02 is split off to give cyclohexadiene... 

An interesting phenomenon has been observed in the high pressure Diels-Alder reactions of the l-oxa[4.4.4]propella-5,7-diene (117) with 1,4-naphthoquinone, maleic anhydride and N-phenylmaleimide, where the diene 117 undergoes a rearrangement to the diene isomer 118 which, although thermodynamically less favored, exhibits a greater reactivity [40]. The reactivities of the three dienophiles differed since maleic anhydride and N-phenylmaleimide reacted only in the presence of diisopropylethylamine (DIEA) and camphorsulfonic acid (CSA), respectively (Scheme 5.15). The distribution of the adduct pairs shows that the oxygen atom does not exert a consistent oriental dominance on TT-facial selectivity. 

Lithium dialkylcopper reagents can be oxidized to symmetrical dimers by O2 at -78°C in THF. The reaction is successful for R = primary and secondary alkyl, vinylic, or aryl. Other oxidizing agents (e.g., nitrobenzene) can be used instead of O2. Vinylic copper reagents dimerize on treatment with oxygen, or simply on standing at 0°C for several days or at 25°C for several hours, to yield LS-dienes." ... 

In a synthesis of gibberellic acid, a diene and quinone, both with oxygen-substituted side chains, gave the initial intermediate. Later in the synthesis, an intramolecular D-A reaction was used to construct the A-ring. 

A further hetero-Diels-Alder reaction with inverse electron demand between o-QM 3 as the dienophile and either of the two diastereomers of spiro dimer 9 as the diene provided the spiro trimers 31 and 32 (Fig. 6.25). The absolute configuration was derived from NMR experiments. It was moreover shown that only two of the four possible stereoisomeric trimers were formed in the hetero-Diels-Alder reaction the attack of the o-QM 3 occurred only from the side syn to the spiro ring oxygen.28... 

On a first, very broad, approximation singlet oxygen behaves somehow like ethylene. Three types of reactions of 102 are usually observed and have been utilized in organic synthesis 606 608) a) the Diels-Alder like cycloaddition to dienes (6.1) b) the ene reaction with olefins (6.2) and c) cycloaddition to activated double bonds (6.3). 

Finally, another interesting use of singlet oxygen in the oxidation of dienes concerns the reactivity of allenes. Besides the formation of endoperoxides by addition to dienes and hydroperoxide formation via the ene reaction, singlet oxygen reacts with electron-rich... 

Acetylenic ethers 7 can be hydrozirconated, and subsequent iododezirconation leads to (fc)-iodo enol ethers 8 (Scheme 4.4) [18], These species undergo efficient Sonogashira couplings to give (E)-enynes, which are ultimately converted to stereodefined dienol ethers. These dienes have proven useful in studies of diastereoselective cycloaddition reactions with singlet oxygen, where R in 8 is a nonracemic auxiliary (e. g., menthyl) (Procedure 3, p. 140). 

Another example of a diene undergoing a [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction with an alkene has been reported recently4. 2-Dimethylaluminumoxy-l,3-cyclohexadiene (7) reacted with phenyl vinyl sulfoxide (8) to afford a diastereomeric mixture of cis substituted cyclobutanols 9 (equation 3). The occurrence of a [2 + 2] cycloaddition as well as the high cis stereoselectivity observed were explained by a pre-organization of the reactants by complexation of the diene bound aluminum with the sulfoxide oxygen on the olefin. 

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