Epoxide Alkenyl, carbonylation

A synthetic application of the sonolysis of iron carbonyls is the preparation of useful ferrilactones. The alkenyl epoxides (2, R = H, Ph, 1-hexanyl) are smoothly converted to the corresponding ferrilactone complexes (3) on reaction with Fe2(CO)9 suspended in THF and sonicated at room temperature [53]. Such complexes undergo several synthetically useful transformations (Scheme 3.7) including oxidation with Ce(IV) as a route to P-lactone natural products or P-lactam antibiotics and reaction with CO to afford 5-lactones [54]. Somewhat surprisingly this reaction is efficient even in diethyl ether, a volatile solvent which delivers low cavitation energy. 

An exciting recent development has been the discovery that titanocene-mediated reactions of oo-carbonyl epoxides [36] and o>alkenyl epoxides [37] can produce functionalised cyclopropane and cyclobutane derivatives. For example, Fernandez-Mateos and co-workers discovered that treatment of... 

Alkenyl substituents attached to aziridine ring carbons allow a palladium-catalyzed carbonyl-insertion reaction to occur, producing a /1-lactam (Scheme 46) <91SL91>. The proposed mechanism <93BMC2415> is based on an analogous reaction of vinyl epoxides <85JA6123>. Initial attack of palladium(O) on the optically active /ra .s-vinylaziridine (67) leads to the zr-allyl palladium complex... 

The scope of vinyl metals as sources of nucleophilic vinyl groups is very great. As well as the expected electrophiles such as halogens, alkyl and acyl halides, aldehydes and ketones, unsaturated carbonyl compounds and epoxides, they also combine with aryl and alkenyl halides with palladium catalysis. The usual stereochemical course is retention at the vinyl group. It is necessary to decide whether the vinyl metal is reactive enough or whether it must first be transformed into an ate complex. Since most of these vinyl metals can be converted into each other with retention, this is an unusually versatile group of reagents. 

Use of the Sharpless epoxidation allows access to optically active alkenyl epoxides and both the reaction with diiron nonacarbonyl under sonolytic conditions and the subsequent carbonylation proceed with retention of configuration, thus allowing us to predetermine the stereochemistry at of the 5-lactone at the C5-centre (Scheme 125). 

The first syntheses of dendralenes by C2-C3 bond formation (Scheme 1.25) were reported by Tsuge and coworkers in 1985 and 1986, and proceed via substitution at either a bromide 160 or an epoxide 163, followed by elimination (Scheme 1.26) [116, 117]. Similar addition/elimination sequences to carbonyl groups or epoxides [120], and substitution reactions [121], followed. Such methods have been superseded by cross-coupling techniques that take place between a 2-functionalized 1,3-butadiene and an alkene (each can be either electrophilic or nucleophilic) or a 4-functionalized 1,2-butadiene and alkene, and occur with allylic transposition (Scheme 1.25). No doubt due to the ready availability of alkenyl halides and allenes, and the variety of increasingly mild and selective reaction variants, cross-coupling has provided access to a large number of diversely substituted dendralenes over the past 20 years, some of which have even been part of natural product syntheses [14,122,123]. 

---