Generation of Carbocation

The use of antimony pentafluoride as a component of superacids for the generation of carbocations from various organic compounds was reviewed recently [16],... 

Reference has already been made in the last chapter to the generation of carbocations, in ion pairs, as intermediates in some displacement reactions at a saturated carbon atom, e.g. the solvolysis of an alkyl halide via the SN1 mechanism. Carbocations are, however, fairly widespread in occurrence and, although their existence is often only transient, they are of considerable importance in a wide variety of chemical reactions. 

The generation of carbocations in strongly acidic media, and the characterization of their structure by NMR in the 1950s was a breathtaking accomplishment that led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to George Olah. Over the past 50 years NMR spectroscopy has evolved as the most important experimental method for the direct study of structure and dynamics of carbocations in solution and in the solid state. Hans-Ullrich Siehl provides an excellent review of computational studies to model experimental NMR spectra for carbocations. This chapter provides an example of how the fruitful interplay between theory and experiment has led to a better understanding of an important class of reactive intermediates. 

Since these methoxylated and acetoxylated sulfides have an acetal structure, it is expected that Lewis acid catalyzed demethoxylation should generate a carbocation intermediate which is stabilized by the neighboring sulfur atom. In fact, nucleophilic substitution with arenes has been successfully achieved as shown in Scheme 6.7 [43], This procedure is useful for the preparation of trifluoroethyl aromatics. As already mentioned, generation of carbocations bearing an a-trifluoromethyl group is difficult due to the strong electron-withdrawing effect. Therefore, this carbon-carbon bond formation reaction is remarkable from both mechanistic and synthetic aspects. 

A number of reactions have been explained on the basis of generation of carbocations. The examples include the Friedel-Crafts alkylation and arylation reactions. Besides pinacol-pinacolne rearrangement, Beckmann rearrangement and Wagner-Merwein rearrangement are other examples. 

An alternative approach for generating the pentadienyl carbocation that is needed for the Nazarov cyclization has been demonstrated by de Lera and co-workers [20, 21] (Eq. 13.18). Vinylallene acetal 56 is converted to a ca 1 1 mixture of cyclopentenes 57 and 58 upon exposure to toluenesulfonic acid in acetone at room temperature. The reaction presumably involves initial generation of carbocation 59 that undergoes conrotation to give 60. Intramolecular trapping of the carbocation by the pendant hydroxyl group leads to the observed product. Depending on whether the conrotation in 59 takes place clockwise or counterclockwise, E- (57) or Z-(58) products are formed. 

Two chapters in this volume describe the generation of carbocations and the characterization of their structure and reactivity in strikingly different milieu. The study of the reactions in water of persistent carbocations generated from aromatic and heteroaromatic compounds has long provided useful models for the reactions of DNA with reactive electrophiles. The chapter by Laali and Borosky on the formation of stable carbocations and onium ions in water describes correlations between structure-reactivity relationships, obtained from wholly chemical studies on these carbocations, and the carcinogenic potency of these carbocations. The landmark studies to characterize reactive carbocations under stable superacidic conditions led to the award of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to George Olah. The chapter by Reddy and Prakash describes the creative extension of this earlier work to the study of extremely unstable carbodications under conditions where they show long lifetimes. The chapter provides a lucid description of modern experimental methods to characterize these unusual reactive intermediates and of ab initio calculations to model the results of experimental work. 

A similar distinction between a system with pre-electrolysis with only one electrode (in this case anodic) process, and a system with simultaneous anodic and cathodic processes (in which anode and cathode are on opposite walls of a microchannel so that each liquid is only in contact with the desired electrode potential, analogous to the fuel cell configurations discussed above) was made by Horii et al. (2008) in their work on the in situ generation of carbocations for nucleophilic reactions. The carbocation is formed at the anode, and the reaction with the nucleophile is either downstream (in the pre-electrolysis case) or after diffusion across the liquid-liquid interface (in the case with both electrodes present at opposite walls). The concept was used for the anodic substitution of cyclic carbamates with allyltrimethylsilane, with moderate to good conversion yields without the need for low-temperature conditions. The advantages of the approach as claimed by the authors are efficient nucleophilic reactions in a single-pass operation, selective oxidation of substrates without oxidation of nucleophile, stabilization of cationic intermediates at ambient temperatures, by the use of ionic liquids as reaction media, and effective trapping of unstable cationic intermediates with a nucleophile. 

Silver is very efficient at removing halides, resulting in generation of carbocations. Because, once a carbocation is formed, a 1,2-hydride shift applied to the illustrated secondary carbocation can only generate a less stable primary carbocation or an identical secondary carbocation, therefore, there is only one product formed in this reaction. 

Silver is very efficient at removing halides, resulting in generation of carbocations. Because protons adjacent to carbocations are acidic and, therefore, participate in... 

An essentially additive effect of ring substituents on the 7r-donor ability of cyclopropyl in generation of carbocation derivatives was also shown in the solvolysis of a series of methyl-substituted cyclopropylcarbinyl dinitrobenzoates (ODNB) (equation 4) studied by... 

The dienone-phenol rearrangement can be induced not only by protonation of the oxygen atom, but also by bromination of the C=C double bond via the generation of carbocation intermediates (equation 147). 

It is useful to recognize that the dissociation of tetrahedral intermediates in carbonyl chemistry is closely related to the generation of carbocations by ionization processes. The protonated carbonyl compounds or iminium ions that... 

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