Halides, aryl reaction with enolate anions

Under ordinary conditions, aryl or alkenyl halides do not react with enolate anions, although reaction can occur with aryl halides bearing strongly electronegative substituents in the ortho and para positions. 2,4-Dinitrochlorobenzene, for example, with ethyl cyanoacetate gives ethyl (2,4-dinitrophenyl)cyanoacetate (90%) by an addition-elimination pathway. Unactivated aryl halides may react with enolates under more vigorous conditions, particularly sodium amide in liquid ammonia. Under these conditions, the reaction of bromobenzene with diethyl-malonate, for example, takes place by an elimination-addition sequence in which benzyne is an intermediate (1.8). 

The photo- RNl reaction of enolate anions with aryl halides has been shown to be useful for both inter- and intra-molecular annelation reactions, but has now been found to suffer one major drawback in its general applicability. When a hydrogen atom is present at the /8-carbon of the enolate anion, hydrogen atom transfer to the transient phenyl radical is the preferred reaction pathway. 

The factors affecting the relative reactivity of aryl halides in SrnI reactions have been analysed and compared645. Competition experiments of pairs of substrates, in photo-stimulated reactions with pinacolone enolate ion in liquid ammonia, reveal a spread of reactivity exceeding three powers of ten. The ease of formation of the radical anion of the substrate appears to dominate the overall reactivity. The rate of dehalogenation of the radical anion may become important when its stability exceeds a certain threshold. When the fragmentation rate of the radical anion intermediate is fairly slow, the overall reactivity diminishes. 

A typical reaction is the photostimulated substitution of aryl halides by ketone [121-131] (and much less efficiently aldehyde [124]) enolate anions (Scheme 5), both inter- [121-128] and intramolecularly [129-131]. The SRN1 reaction with o-bromoacetophenones is a useful method for the construction of an aromatic ring (Scheme 24) [132-133], with o-halophenylalkyl ketones for macrocycles (Scheme 25) [134], with o-haloanilines for indoles [123], with o-halobenzylamines for isoquinolines [135], and several other heterocyclic syntheses are possible [136]. 

There is good evidence that some nucleophilic substitution reactions do involve a single electron transfer, but the best established use a slightly different mechanism. These are the SrnI reactions, with the subscript RN standing for radical nucleophilic. Examples are the reaction of the nitronate anion 4.14 with p-nitrobenzyl chloride 4.15, 251 and the reaction of the pinacolone enolate 4.16 with bromobenzene.252 The former might have been a straightforward SN2 reaction, but actually takes the S l pathway because the nitro groups make the electron transfer exceptionally easy. The latter cannot take place by a conventional Sn2 reaction, because aryl (and vinyl) halides are not susceptible to direct displacement, and the S l pathway overcomes this difficulty. 

Another reaction that cannot be an SN2, because of the impossibility of carrying it out on an aryl halide, is the displacement from the aryl bromide 7.187. The mechanism is an Sr jI reaction (see p. 147), involving an electron transfer from the enolate 7.186 to the halide 7.187. The radical anion 7.189 loses the bromide ion to give the aryl radical 7.190, and this couples with the radical 7.188 derived from the nucleophile to give the ketone 7.191.252 The m-mcthyl group shows that the reaction did not take place by way of a benzyne. 

A nickel-catalyzed ene cyclization (sec. 11.13) has been reported that uses Ni(cod)2- The reaction proceeds by initial formation of a ac-allylnickel complex, which facilitates the intramolecular ene reaction with an allylic amine unit. l jt-Allylnickel complexes can be used in coupling reactions with both aryl and alkyl halides. Enolate anions react with nickel(O) reagents to form a complex that subsequently couples to aryl iodides. Semmelhack s final step in the synthesis of cephalotaxinone (446) treated 445 with Ni(cod)2 to... 

One way of carrying out nucleophilic aromatic substitution reactions under mild conditions is the Ar RNl process, which is initiated by (usually, but not necessarily, photoinduced) electron transfer to an aryl halide, e.g., from an enolate Cleavage of the resulting aryl radical anion with loss of a halide anion gives an aryl radical that combines with the enolate, thus forming the desired aryl-carbon bond. 

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