Examples of Grignard Reagents

Grignard reagents will react with aldehydes or ketones to furnish secondary or tertiary alcohol products, respectively, after a mildly acidic aqueous workup. 

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An extremely interesting example of Grignard reagent mediated alkane synthesis is the coupling reaction of l-adamantyl-l,l-dibromo-2,2-dimethylpropane with magnesium (equation 99) The highly hindered alkane product is novel in the sense that interconversion of rotamers across the ethane moiety does not take place under ambient conditions. 

These reagents are named after the French chemist Victor Grignard, who demonstrated their utility in preparing alcohols. For his achievements, he was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Below are a couple of specific examples of Grignard reagents. 

Organolithium and -magnesium compounds. Compared with extensive studies carried out on the Ni-catalyzed transmetallation reaction of Grignard reagents[43I,432], few examples of the Pd-catalyzed reactions of Mg are... 

We saw an example of nucleophilic ring opening of epoxides in Section 15 4 where the reaction of Grignard reagents with ethylene oxide was described as a synthetic route to primary alcohols... 

The addition of Grignard reagents to unsaturated ketones gives mixtures resulting from 1,2-addition and 1,4-addition. In the presence of cuprous salts, however, the conjugate (1,4) addition is enhanced to the extent that the reaction becomes synthetically useful (11). Two examples of this procedure are given. 

Organometallic compounds can be hydrolyzed by acid treatment. For active metals such as Mg, Li, and so on, water is sufficiently acidic. The most important example of this reaction is hydrolysis of Grignard reagents, but M may be many other metals or metalloids. Examples are SiRs, HgR, Na, and B(OH)2- Since aryl Grignard and aryllithium compounds are fairly easy to prepare, they are often used to prepare salts of weak acids, for example,... 

Next to the formation of Grignard reagents, the most important application of this reaction is the conversion of alkyl and aryl halides to organolithium compounds, but it has also been carried out with many other metals, (e.g., Na, Be, Zn, Hg, As, Sb, and Sn). With sodium, the Wurtz reaction (10-93) is an important side reaction. In some cases, where the reaction between a halide and a metal is too slow, an alloy of the metal with potassium or sodium can be used instead. The most important example is the preparation of tetraethyl lead from ethyl bromide and a Pb—Na alloy. 

Trialkylsilyl groups have a modest stabilizing effect on adjacent carbanions (see Part A, Section 3.4.2). Reaction of the carbanions with carbonyl compounds gives (3-hydroxyalkylsilanes. (3-Hydroxyalkylsilanes are converted to alkenes by either acid or base.270 These eliminations provide the basis for a synthesis of alkenes. The reaction is sometimes called the Peterson reaction.211 For example, the Grignard reagent derived from chloromethyltrimethylsilane adds to an aldehyde or ketone and the intermediate can be converted to a terminal alkene by acid or base.272... 

The addition of Grignard reagents to aldehydes, ketones, and esters is the basis for the synthesis of a wide variety of alcohols, and several examples are given in Scheme 7.3. Primary alcohols can be made from formaldehyde (Entry 1) or, with addition of two carbons, from ethylene oxide (Entry 2). Secondary alcohols are obtained from aldehydes (Entries 3 to 6) or formate esters (Entry 7). Tertiary alcohols can be made from esters (Entries 8 and 9) or ketones (Entry 10). Lactones give diols (Entry 11). Aldehydes can be prepared from trialkyl orthoformate esters (Entries 12 and 13). Ketones can be made from nitriles (Entries 14 and 15), pyridine-2-thiol esters (Entry 16), N-methoxy-A-methyl carboxamides (Entries 17 and 18), or anhydrides (Entry 19). Carboxylic acids are available by reaction with C02 (Entries 20 to 22). Amines can be prepared from imines (Entry 23). Two-step procedures that involve formation and dehydration of alcohols provide routes to certain alkenes (Entries 24 and 25). 

The availability of oxepins that bear a side chain containing a Lewis basic oxygen atom (entry 2, Table 6.4) has further important implications in enantioselective synthesis. The derived alcohol, benzyl ether, or methoxyethoxymethyl (MEM) ethers, in which resident Lewis basic heteroatoms are less sterically hindered, readily undergo diastereoselective uncatalyzed alkylation reactions when treated with a variety of Grignard reagents [17]. The examples shown below (Scheme 6.7) demonstrate the excellent synthetic potential of these stereoselective alkylations. 

In most text-books this point of view is scarcely considered, and few cases are reported. A frequent example is the stabilization of Grignard reagents by electron donor solvents (usually by lone pairs of the oxygen atoms of ethers), as shown in 1. This lack of attention is a simplification which generates little interest about the real nature of the starting materials and their energy levels, when reactions take place. 

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