Electrophilic Attack on Conjugated Dienes 1,4 Addition

In Summary Conjugated dienes are electron rich and are attacked by electrophiles to give intermediate allylic cations on the way to 1,2- and 1,4-addition products. These reactions may be subject to kinetic control at relatively low temperatures. At relatively higher temperatures, the kinetic product ratios may change to thermodynamic product ratios, when such product formation is reversible. 

Besides direct nucleophilic attack onto the acceptor group, an activated diene may also undergo 1,4- or 1,6-addition in the latter case, capture of the ambident enolate with a soft electrophile can take place at two different positions. Hence, the nucleophilic addition can result in the formation of three regioisomeric alkenes, which may in addition be formed as E/Z isomers. Moreover, depending on the nature of nucleophile and electrophile, the addition products may contain one or two stereogenic centers, and, as a further complication, basic conditions may give rise to the isomerization of the initially formed 8,y-unsaturated carbonyl compounds (and other acceptor-substituted alkenes of this type) to the thermodynamically more stable conjugated isomer (Eq. 4.1). 

Similar to the addition reactions of acceptor-substituted dienes (Scheme 16), the outcome of the transformation depends on the regioselectivity of the nucleophilic attack of the organocopper reagent (1,4- vs. 1,6-addition) and of the electrophilic capture of the enolate formed. The allenyl enolate obtained by 1,6-addition can afford either a conjugated diene or an allene upon reaction with a soft electrophile, and thus opens up the possibility to create axial chirality. The first copper-mediated addition reactions to Michael acceptors of this type, for example, 3-alkynyl-2-cyclopentenone 75,... 

Polyacetylene reacts with chlorine rapidly to give a white polymer that is equivalent to poly(l,2-dichloroethylene) and no stereospecificity has been reported on the chlorinated polymer. The addition of halogens is an important general reaction of carbon-carbon double bonds in a stereospecific and regiospecific sense. For instance, the electrophilic additions of chlorine to ethylene, buta-1,3-diene and hexa-l,3,5-triene have been shown to proceed by 1,2-trans (anti), 1,4-cis (syn) and 1,6-trans (anti) attack, respectively. This stereospecificity has been rationalized with a mixing rule of a-n orbital interaction. The reaction of a long conjugated polyene like polyacetylene with chlorine may produce an atactic chlorinated polyene, because random l,2n additions occur to result in a random addition product. ... 

Conjugated dienes coordinated to a transition metal can readily be transformed into a rr-allylmetal complex by functionalization at the 4-position.f This makes dienes useful substrates for catalytic transformations since the 7r-allyl complex formed can undergo further reaction. t A number of Pd-catalyzed reactions of conjugated dienes are known that proceed via rr-allylpalladium intermediates and lead to useful 1,4- or 1,2-funtional-ization of the diene. There are two types of reactions of this kind (i) Pd(0)-catalyzed reactions that involve initial oxidative addition and (ii) Pd(II)-catalyzed reactions that involve electrophilic activation of the diene by the metal followed by nucleophilic attack. This section deals with C— N and C—O bond formation via these two types of reactions. This topic has previously been reviewed in connection with Pd-catalyzed additions to conjugated dienes. [5] [n] -jijg present review will focus mainly on the work published since 1997 but will also briefly discuss previous work. 

---