Enolate anions, amide

Besides ordinary esters (containing an a hydrogen), the reaction can also be carried out with lactones and, as in 16-38, with the y position of a,p-unsaturated esters (vinylogy). There are also cases, where the enolate anion of an amide was condensed with an aldehyde. ... 

Under the conditions of the Birch reduction, IV-Boc amides such as 60 can be reductively alkylated in high yields, presumably via a dianion intermediate which is protonated by ammonia at C-5 leaving an enolate anion at C-2 <96JOC7664>. Quenching the reaction with alkyl halides or ammonium chloride then affords the 3-pyrrolines 61. 

SRNl substitution include ketone enolates,183 ester enolates,184 amide enolates,185 2,4-pentanedione dianion,186 pentadienyl and indenyl carbanions,187 phenolates,188 diethyl phosphite anion,189 phosphides,190 and thiolates.191 The reactions are frequently initiated by light, which promotes the initiating electron transfer. As for other radical chain processes, the reaction is sensitive to substances that can intercept the propagation intermediates. 

Similarly, the amide ion could be used to abstract a proton from a ketone to produce an enolate anion (see Section 10.2) in an essentially irreversible reaction, since the difference in acidities of the ketone and ammonia is so marked. However, if the base chosen were ethoxide, then enolate anion formation would... 

Note that we can write a similar resonance picture for esters, and we shall actually need to invoke this when we discuss enolate anions (see Section 10.7). However, electron donation from oxygen is not as effective as from the less electronegative nitrogen. We shall also see that this resonance effect in amides has other consequences, such as increased acidity of the amide hydrogens (see Section 10.7) and stereochemical aspects of peptides and proteins (see Section 13.3). In addition, the amide derivatives have... 

These compounds ionize and act as sources of hydride and amide ions respectively, which are able to remove a-protons from carbonyl compounds. These ions are actually the conjugate bases of hydrogen and ammonia respectively, compounds that are very weak acids indeed. What becomes important here is that enolate anion formation becomes essentially irreversible the enolate anion formed is insufficiently basic to be able to remove... 

When the carbonyl compound is added to this base, abstraction of a proton and formation of the enolate anion follow, as seen with sodinm hydride or sodium amide above. Again, this reaction is essentially irreversible because the other product is the weak base diisopropylamine (pATa 36). So far, there does not seem any particular advantage in nsing LDA rather than sodium hydride or sodium amide. 

Whereas the pATa for the a-protons of aldehydes and ketones is in the region 17-19, for esters such as ethyl acetate it is about 25. This difference must relate to the presence of the second oxygen in the ester, since resonance stabilization in the enolate anion should be the same. To explain this difference, overlap of the non-carbonyl oxygen lone pair is invoked. Because this introduces charge separation, it is a form of resonance stabilization that can occur only in the neutral ester, not in the enolate anion. It thus stabilizes the neutral ester, reduces carbonyl character, and there is less tendency to lose a proton from the a-carbon to produce the enolate. Note that this is not a new concept we used the same reasoning to explain why amides were not basic like amines (see Section 4.5.4). 

Note that acids, and primary and secondary amides cannot be employed to generate enolate anions. With acids, the carboxylic acid group has pATa of about 3-5, so the carboxylic proton will be lost much more easily than the a-hydrogens. In primary and secondary amides, the N-H (pATa about 18) will be removed more readily than the a-hydrogens. Their acidity may be explained because of resonance stabilization of the anion. Tertiary amides might be used, however, since there are no other protons that are more acidic. 

Another synthetic approach towards the synthesis of compound 80 involves prior deprotonation of the carboxylic amide with f-BuLi, which is then followed by reaction with dimethylzinc (Scheme 10). All three compounds have similar structural features, i.e. they are dimers as a result of two O-bridging enolate anions between two lithium atoms. The... 

It is important to distinguish tautomerism from resonance, a term used to indicate that the properties of a given molecule cannot be represented by a single valence structure but can be represented as a hybrid of two or more structures in which all the nuclei remain in the same places. Only bonding electrons move to convert one resonance form into another. Examples are the enolate anion, which can be thought of as a hybrid of structures A and B, and the amide linkage, which can be represented by a similar pair of resonance forms. 

Oxazolones are attacked by a variety of electrophiles at C(4) these reactions, which require the presence of bases, proceed through the enolate anions (197). This type of anion adds to carbonyl compounds, a key step in the Erlenmeyer synthesis of unsaturated azlactones (equation 35) (see Section 4.18.4.3.4). The anions are intermediates in the formation of the amides (198) when oxazolones are treated with enamines (Scheme 15) (71JCS(C)598>. 

Their stability at low temperature means that lithium enolates are usually preferred, but sodium and potassium enolates can also be formed by abstraction of a proton by strong bases. The increased separation of the metal cation from the enolate anion with the larger alkali metals leads to more reactive but less stable enolates. Typical very strong Na and K bases include the hydrides (NaH, KH) or amide anions derived from ammonia (NaNH2, KNH2) or... 

The selective protonation of enol anions at C(4) has been exploited as a method for the de-conjugation of A -3-ketones. Birch [116] first succeeded in obtaining cholest"5 en-3-one by cleaving the acetate (ir) with potassium amide in... 

A similar conformational analysis has been done with formamide derivatives, with secondary amides, and for hydroxamide acids. It is known that thioformamide has a larger rotational barrier than formamide, which can be explained by a traditional picture of amide resonance that is more appropriate for the thioformamide than formamide itself. Torsional barriers in a-keto amides have been reported, and the C—N bond of acetamides, thioa-mides, enamides carbamates (R2N—C02R), and enolate anions derived... 

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