Heterocycles from nitrenes

The aziridination of olefins, which forms a three-membered nitrogen heterocycle, is one important nitrene transfer reaction. Aziridination shows an advantage over the more classic olefin hydroamination reaction in some syntheses because the three-membered ring that is formed can be further modified. More recently, intramolecular amidation and intermolecular amination of C-H bonds into new C-N bonds has been developed with various metal catalysts. When compared with conventional substitution or nucleophilic addition routes, the direct formation of C-N bonds from C-H bonds reduces the number of synthetic steps and improves overall efficiency.2 After early work on iron, manganese, and copper,6 Muller, Dauban, Dodd, Du Bois, and others developed different dirhodium carboxylate catalyst systems that catalyze C-N bond formation starting from nitrene precursors,7 while Che studied a ruthenium porphyrin catalyst system extensively.8 The rhodium and ruthenium systems are... 

Nitrenes as intermediates in synthesis of N-heterocycles 82MI14. Nitroacetic acid and its esters in synthesis of N-heterocycles 79S666. Nitro compounds of aliphatic series, synthesis of N-heterocycles from ... 

Several phenyliodonium imides 465 derived from heteroarenesulfonylamides have been synthesized from (diacetoxyiodo)benzene and the respective amides 464 (Scheme 2.134) [630], Imides 465 can be used as sources of the corresponding heterocycle-containing nitrenes in the copper-catalyzed aziridination and sulfimidization reactions. 

The rapid development of C-H functionalization has helped in accomplishing the synthesis of a variety of complex heterocycles from simple precursors. Recendy, Ramana and co-worker demonstrated a simple one-pot procedure for the Cu(I)-catalyzed SNAr reaction of o-bromochalcones 1 with sodium azide followed by intramolecular cyclization through nitrene C-H insertion to provide 2-aroylindole derivatives 2 [56] (Scheme 7.1) on the basis of their previous work [57]. Furthermore, this methodology is also applicable with the 2 -bromocinnamates giving the indole-2-carboxylates. 

Aryl and heteroaryl nitrene insertion processes have also been employed in the synthesis of heterocycles. The azide 459, for example, is converted on irradiation into the imidazole 460,383 and dihydro-10-thiaisoalloxazines are obtained in good yield on photoelimination of nitrogen from 6-(2-azido-phenylthio)uracils.384... 

Nitrenes can be generated from many precursors such as azides, isocyanates, ylides, heterocycles, and nitro compounds.236,237 Amongst these, azides are the most convenient precursors since they are easily prepared and can be decomposed by heat, light or a suitable catalyst. Despite considerable endeavors, no one has yet provided a synthetically viable method to use azides as sources of nitrenes.237 The breakthrough of nitrene chemistry was the recognization of the value of A-arenesulfonyl iminoiodinanes (ArS02N=IPh) as nitrene precursors by Breslow and Mansuy. - They reported inter- and intramolecular C-H insertions by tosylimino phenyl-iodinane (TsN=IPh) in the presence of Mn(m) or Fe(m) porphyrins or [Rh2(OAc)4]. Subsequently, Muller... 

As shown in the manganese- and ruthenium-catalyzed intermolecular nitrene insertions, most of these results supposed the transfer of a nitrene group from iminoiodanes of formula PhI=NR to substrates that contain a somewhat activated carbon-hydrogen bond (Scheme 14). Allylic or benzylic C-H bonds, C-H bonds a to oxygen, and very recently, Q spz)-Y bonds of heterocycles have been the preferred reaction sites for the above catalytic systems, whereas very few examples of the tosylamidation of unactivated C-H bonds have been reported to date. 

Besides the bond-pair cheletropic disconnection of oxiranes and aziridines to an alkene and "atomic oxygen" (from a carboxylic peracid) or a nitrene, respectively, and the hetero-Diels-Alder cycloreversion, of special interest are the 1,3-dipolar cycloeliminations of five-membered rings [-(34-2)] leading to 1,3-dipoles and an unsaturated acceptor or dipolarophile. So large is the number of different five-membered heterocyclic systems resulting from 1,3-dipolar... 

JV-Alkoxycarbonyl- and iV-arenesulfonyl-imines can be prepared by the reaction between pyridines and nitrenes, the latter being generated from the corresponding azides (72JOC2022, 64TL1733). Thermolysis of pyridinium iV-acylimines gives isocyanates and the parent heterocycle <79JCS(P1)446). 

In general, the reactive nitrenes can be generated by thermolytic or photolytic elimination of stable compounds from suitable precursors such as heterocycles, ylides, and azides. The most commonly used method for the generation of nitrenes is the thermolysis or photolysis of the corresponding... 

The nitrene 28 is not produced from the azide precursor, but from heterocycles via photolysis and thermolysis as shown in Sch. 11 [20]. Iminoacyl nitrenes react intramolecularly giving benzimidazoles with good yields (Sch. 11), and, dependending on the precursor used and the reaction conditions, varying amounts of carbodiimides are obtained. The reactivity of the acyl nitrenes is influenced by the substituent connected to the acyl group (see Sch. 10), however all acyl nitrenes are quite reactive and therefore rather unselective. Apart from cycloaddition reactions with Tt-bonds, insertion reactions into a-bonds, additions to lone pair electrons of... 

In addition to epoxides, three-membered nitrogen heterocycles, aziridines, can be obtained by means of catalytic asymmetric aziridinations (Eq. 30). To this aim, chiral ruthenium(salen) complexes 67 [56] and 68 [57] were useful (Fig. 1). The former phosphine complexes 67 gave the aziridine from two cy-cloalkenes with 19-83% ee [56]. On the other hand, terminal alkenes selectively underwent aziridination in the presence of the latter carbonyl complex 68 with 87-95% ee [57]. In these examples, N-tosyliminophenyliodinane or N-tosyl azide were used as nitrene sources. Quite recently, catalytic intramolecular ami-dation of saturated C-H bonds was achieved by the use of a ruthenium(por-phyrin) complex (Eq. 31) [58]. In the presence of the ruthenium catalyst and 2 equiv iodosobenzene diacetate, sulfamate esters 69 were converted into cyclic sulfamidates 70 in moderate-to-good yields. 

The synthesis of medium-ring nitrogen heterocycles, such as azepines, azocines, and azonines, has been reviewed <1991T9131>. 1/7-Azepines 321 result from spontaneous valence-bond isomerization of azanorcaradienes 320 (Scheme 163), which are themselves made by reaction of arenes with nitrenes. Oxepins are prepared by an analogous method (323 324) the starting material is made from the dibromide 322 (Scheme 164) <1964AGE510>. 

A selective sampling of the photochemical cycloaddition and cyclization chemistry of 2H-azirines has been outlined in this chapter. Some photochemical sequences increase molecular complexity more than others, but each seems to provide complex heterocyclic structures in a very efficient manner. Indeed, many of these photoreactions rapidly construct hetero-polycyclic systems that are difficult to produce in other ways. In contrast to their photochemical behavior, the major thermal reaction of 2H-azirines generally involves C(2)-N bond cleavage to form vinyl nitrenes which further react by either insertion into an adjacent C-H bond or else undergo addition across a neighboring rc-bond. The 27i-electrons of the carbon-nitrogen double bond of 2H-azirines can also participate in thermal symmetry-allowed [4- -2]-cycloadditions with a variety of substrates. It is clear from the above discussion that the chemistry of 2H-azirines is both mechanistically complex and... 

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