Friedel-Crafts reaction, polymer-supported synthesis

Rare earth metal triflates are recognized as a very efficient Lewis acid catalysts of several reactions including the aldol reaction, the Michael reaction, allylation, the Diels-Alder reaction, the Friedel-Crafts reaction, and glycosylation [110]. A polymer-sup-ported scandium catalyst has been developed and used for quinoline library synthesis (Sch. 8) [111], because lanthanide triflates were known to be effective in the synthesis of quinolines from A-arylimines [112,113]. This catalyst (103) was readily prepared from poly(acrylonitrile) 100 by chemical modification. A variety of combinations of aldehydes, amines, and olefins are possible in this reaction. Use of the polymer-supported catalyst has several advantages in quinoline library construction. 

It is similarly difficult to prevent the Friedel-Crafts reaction between side chain carboxyl groups and the aromatic nuclei of insoluble polymeric supports used in solid phase peptide synthesis (cf. Chapter X). Here, however, the ketone by-products are firmly anchored to the polymer ... 

In 2008, Chi et al. reported a tandem reaction of indoles, a,P-unsaturated aldehydes, and methyl vinyl ketone (MVK) for the synthesis of chiral indole derivatives with two stereogenic centers [ 19]. To avoid the interference of the two secondary amine catalysts and cocatalyst acid, the soluble star polymer-based site isolatbn method was adopted, whereby the supported imidazolidinone catalyst promoted initial Friedel-Crafts alkylation and the supported pyrrolidine derivative promoted the following Michael addition to MVK (Scheme 9.19). Notably, simple combination of these catalysts in one pot didn t mediate the cascade reaction efficiently despite the fact that the MacMillan imidazolidinone and pyrrolidine catalyst can efficiently promote separate Friedel-Crafts reaction and Michael addition, respectively. Moreover, when the pyrrolidine catalyst was replaced by its enantiomer, a diaste-reomer of the product could be obtained with high enantioselectivity. This smdy presented a novel solution to the efficient combination of incompatible substrates and catalysts. 

---