Ether compounds carbonyl ylide generation

The oxygen as heteroatom in ethers or carbonyl compounds is weak to moderate Lewis base. Nevertheless, a highly reactive metal carbene complex can interact with the oxygen to generate oxygen ylide. The interaction between ether and metal carbene functional groups is believed to be rather weak as demonstrated by the facts that other metal carbene reactions, such as G-H insertion and cyclopropanation, can proceed in ethereal solvents." These experiments demonstrate that the formation of the metal ylide is much less favored in the equilibrium shown in Equation (1). ... 

Similar to ethers and carbonyl compounds, sulfides or thiocarbonyl groups interact with metal carbene to generate the corresponding ylides. These ylides undergo similar subsequent reactions as their oxygen counterparts (Figure 4). 

The remote group of epoxyenone (184) functions as a neat intramolecular trap for the carbonyl ylide (185) generated in the 1ir,ir -excitation of this compound the product is the enol ether (186) . ... 

Transition-metal mediated carbene transfer from 205 to benzaldehyde generates carbonyl ylides 211 which are transformed into oxiranes 216 by 1,3-cyclization, into tetrahydrofurans 212, 213 or dihydrofurans 214 by [3 + 2] cycloaddition with electron-deficient alkenes or aUtynes, and 1,3-dioxolanes 215 by [3 + 2] cycloaddition with excess carbonyl compound (equation 67). Related carbonyl ylide reactions have been performed with crotonaldehyde, acetone and cyclohexanone (equation 68). However, the ylide generated from cyclohexanone could not be trapped with dimethyl fumarate. Rather, the enol ether 217, probably formed by 1,4-proton shift in the ylide intermediate, was isolated in low yield . In this respect, the carbene transfer reaction with 205 is not different from that with ethyl diazoacetate, whereas a close analogy to diazomalonates is observed for the other carbonyl ylide reactions. 

For the BINlM-Ni(ll)-catalyzed reactions of cyclohexyl vinyl ether, the use of an epoxyindanone as the 3-acyl-2-benzopyrylium-4-olate precursor revealed that the chiral Lewis acid can function as a catalyst for asymmetric induction (Scheme 7.29). Thus, slow addition (over a period of 1 h) of epoxyindanone into a solution of cyclohexyl vinyl ether and the Ni(ll) catalyst in dry CH2CI2 under reflux conditions gave eniio-cycloadduct (60% yield) with 86% ee. This result suggests that the asymmetric induction is effectively catalyzed by the (7 )-BINIM-4Me-2QN-Ni(II) complex, and without the participation of Rh2(OAc)4, which may be involved only in the generation of the carbonyl ylides for reactions of diazocarbonyl compounds as substrates [66]. 

Ethers, sulfides, amines, carbonyl compounds, and imines are among the frequently encountered Lewis bases in the ylide formation from such metal carbene complex. The metal carbene in the ylide formation can be divided into stable Fisher carbene complex and unstable reactive metal carbene intermediates. The reaction of the former is thus stoichiometric and the latter is usually a transition metal complex-catalyzed reaction of a-diazocarbonyl compounds. The decomposition of a-diazocarbonyl compounds with catalytic transition metal complex has been the most widely used approach to generate reactive metal carbenes. For compressive reviews, see Refs 1,1a. 

Because the active reagent, an ylide, is unstable, it is generated in the presence of the carbonyl compound by dehydrohalogenation of an alkyltriphenylphosphonium bromide with phenyllithium in dry ether in a nitrogen atmosphere. The existence of the four-membered ring intermediate was proved by nmr in 1984. ... 

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