Dienes unreactive

Entry n cf diene Unreacted diene/% A Product yield/% BCD ... 

A combination of the promoting effects of Lewis acids and water is a logical next step. However, to say the least, water has not been a very popular medium for Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reactions, which is not surprising since water molecules interact strongly with Lewis-acidic and the Lewis-basic atoms of the reacting system. In 1994, when the research described in this thesis was initiated, only one example of Lewis-acid catalysis of a Diels-Alder reaction in water was published Lubineau and co-workers employed lanthanide triflates as a catalyst for the Diels-Alder reaction of glyoxylate to a relatively unreactive diene . No comparison was made between the process in water and in organic solvents. 

Dienes and allylarcncs can be prepared by the Pd-catalyzcd coupling of allylic compounds with hard carbon nucleophiles derived from alkenyl and aryl compounds of main group metals. Allylic compounds with various leaving groups can be used. Some of them are unreactive with soft nucleophiles, but... 

Because of their strong aromatic character, benzene and naphthalene are very unreactive as dienes however anthracene 19 reacts with highly reactive dienophiles, such as dehydrobenzene (benzyne) 20 ... 

In contrast to those unreactive dienes that can t achieve an s-cis conformation, other dienes are fixed only in the correct s-cis geometry and are therefore highly reactive in the Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction. 1,3-Cyclopentadiene, for example, is so reactive that it reacts with itself. At room temperature, 1,3-cycIopentadiene dimerizes. One molecule acts as diene and a second molecule acts as dienophile in a self Diels-Alder reaction. 

In contrast LP-DE gives disappointing results for intramolecular imino Diels-Alder reactions, even in the presence of CSA. This is due to the fact that weak acids become strong acids in highly polar media such as 5.0m LP-DE and the protonation of diene, with concomitant diene isomerization, competes with cycloaddition [42]. This observation was supported by using trifluoroacetic acid (TEA). The imine 33 (Scheme 6.21) in LP-DE at room temperature in the presence of TEA gave a 1 1 mixture of cycloadduct 34 and the isomerized diene 35 within the unreacted imine 33. No Diels-Alder cycloadduct 36 was detected. 

The synthetic utility of the D-A reaction can be expanded by the use of dienophiles that contain masked functionality and are the synthetic equivalents of unreactive or inaccessible compounds. (See Section 13.1.2 for a more complete discussion of the concept of synthetic equivalents.) For example, a-chloroacrylonitrile shows satisfactory reactivity as a dienophile. The a-chloronitrile functionality in the adduct can be hydrolyzed to a carbonyl group. Thus, a-chloroacrylonitrile can function as the equivalent of ketene, CH2=C=0,63 which is not a suitable dienophile because it has a tendency to react with dienes by [2 + 2] cycloaddition, rather than the desired [4 + 2] fashion. 

Release and Reactivity of tf-o-QMs Although the r 2-o-QM Os complexes 11 are stable when exposed to air or dissolved in water, the quinone methide moiety can be released upon oxidation (Scheme 3.8).16 For example, reaction of the Os-based o-QM 12 with 1.5 equivalents of CAN (ceric ammonium nitrate) in the presence of an excess of 3,4-dihydropyran led to elimination of free o-QM and its immediate trapping as the Diels-Alder product tetrahydropyranochromene, 14. Notably, in the absence of the oxidizing agent, complex 12 is completely unreactive with both electron-rich (dihydropyran) and electron-deficient (A-methylmaleimide) dienes. 

Although 1,1-disubstituted-l,3-dienes are quite unreactive in the Diels-Alder reaction, allylidenecyclopropanes exhibit a good reactivity especially toward activated dienophiles. The strain present in the alkylidenecyclopropane moiety is responsible for the reactivity enhancement observed in these compounds. The literature concerning the parent diene and few analogs until 1984 has been thoroughly reviewed by Krief [31]. Since then, some other examples of variously-substituted allylidenecyclopropane reacting as dienes in [4 + 2] cycloadditions were published. 

The substitution of the exo-methylene hydrogen atoms of MCP with halogens seems to favor the [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction by stabilizing the intermediate diradical. Indeed, chloromethylenecyclopropane (96) reacts with acrylonitrile (519) to give a diastereomeric mixture of spirohexanes in good yield (Table 41, entry 2) [27], but was unreactive towards styrene and ds-stilbene. Anyway, it reacted with dienes (2,3-dimethylbutadiene, cyclopentadiene, cyc-lohexadiene, furan) exclusively in a [4 + 2] fashion (see Sect. 2.1.1) [27], while its... 

At the other extreme of diene reactivity, some dienes are so unreactive that only powerful dienophiles such as PTAD will undergo Diels-Alder reactions with them. Thus, 4,5-dimethylene-l,3-dioxolan-2-one fails to react with TCNE or maleic anhydride, but gives the required Diels-Alder adduct (63%) with PTAD.232 The powerful dienophilic properties of PTAD have... 

All Diels-Alder reactions of tropones 51 as dienes with different types of dienophiles shown in Scheme 11 are accelerated by pressure, so that in some cases the desired cycloadducts are only formed at high pressure. An interesting synthetic equivalent of the unreactive acetylene in Diels-Alder syntheses is the oxanorbomadiene derivative 52 (Scheme 11 entry 2). 52 reacts with tropones forming the adducts 53, 54 and 55, which undergo a retro-Diels-Alder reaction leading to 56 and 57, the formal [4+2] cycloadducts of tropones to acetylene. 

In most other cases, however, the diene system simply becomes too unreactive to participate in radical chain reactions. Thus, the reductive decarboxylation of ester 7 by Barton-POC ester methodology20 or as the selenoester21 gives the reduced product 8, cleanly without any trace of product in which the diene system has participated in the reaction (equation 4)20-21. 

This scheme can be extended by using mixtures of dienes with electron-deficient alkenes such as acrylonitrile. Due to its nucleophilic nature, addition of radical 68 to acrylonitrile is faster than addition to butadiene. The resulting ambiphilic adduct radical then adds to butadiene to form a relatively unreactive allyl radical. Oxidation and trapping of the allyl cation by methanol lead, as before, to products such as 72 and 73, which are composed of four components the radical precursor 67, acrylonitrile, butadiene and methanol (equation 30)17,94. 

Conjugated dienes (such as 1,3-cyclohexadiene, cyclopentadiene, 2,4-hexadienoic-sorbic-acid) and polyenes can be selectively hydrogenated to monoenes unactivated alkenes are totally unreactive [20]. Unfortunately, the possibilities for modification of the catalyst by ligand alteration or by the use of additives are very limited [50, 51]. 

The [Pt(dien)Cl]+ ion IX produced by ES was unreactive with D20 but the CID product ion [Pt(dien-H)]+ X reacted by addition of D20 to give (XI). There is a possibility that Structure XII could be formed by the addition of D20, but as both MeCN and py also add to X, the addition structure XI is most likely correct. 

Dienes reacted considerably faster than the (Z)-isomers, and this feature was utilized to separate the (Z)-isomer from the stereoisomeric mixture. When 6-phenyl-1,3-hexadiene (EIZ = 50/50) was treated with 0.6 molar amounts of PPh3 and CF3S03H at 0 °C for 6 h, the ( )-phosphonium salt (53%) was formed. The unreacted (2)-1,3-diene could be separated by ether extraction in 41% yield. This procedure provides easy access to (Z)-1,3-dienes.22... 

For hydrogenation in water with an inexpensive catalyst, solutions containing cobalt salts and excess cyanide are useful10,11. The catalysts are selective for conjugated C=C bonds and are relatively unreactive with unconjugated dienes such as 1,5-cyclooctadiene. 

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