Four-membered Heterocyclic Systems

Four-membered heterocycles are often puckered rather than planar (Table 4), As expected, exo- and e do-unsaturation tend to make these systems planar. 

Concerted cycloadditions are observed with heterocyclics of all ring sizes. The heterocycles can react directly, or via a valence tautomer, and they can utilize all or just a part of unsaturated moieties in their rings. With three-membered rings, ylides are common reactive valence tautomers. Open chain 47T-systems are observed as intermediates with four-membered rings, and bicyclic valence tautomers are commonly reactive species in additions by large rings. Very often these reactive valence tautomers are formed under orbital symmetry control, both by thermal and by photochemical routes. 

Four-membered heterocycles are easily formed via [2-I-2] cycloaddition reac tions [65] These cycloaddmon reactions normally represent multistep processes with dipolar or biradical intermediates The fact that heterocumulenes, like isocyanates, react with electron-deficient C=X systems is well-known [116] Via this route, (1 lactones are formed on addition of ketene derivatives to hexafluoroacetone [117, 118] The presence of a trifluoromethyl group adjacent to the C=N bond in quinoxalines, 1,4-benzoxazin-2-ones, l,2,4-triazm-5-ones, and l,2,4-tnazin-3,5-diones accelerates [2-I-2] photocycloaddition processes with ketenes and allenes [106] to yield the corresponding azetidine derivatives Starting from olefins, fluonnaied oxetanes are formed thermally and photochemically [119, 120] The reaction of 5//-l,2-azaphospholes with fluonnated ketones leads to [2-i-2j cycloadducts [121] (equation 27)... 

The reader is referred to previous reviews for historical aspects and early work. For condensed quinazoline systems, The Chemistry of Heterocyclic Compoundsr—Six Membered Heterocyclic Nitrogen Compounds with Four Condensed Rings should be consulted. 

The fusion of four membered-heterocycles with two heteroatoms onto face a of the quinoline offers two isomeric combinations of the tricyclic ring system l,2-heterocyclo[2,3-a]quinoline and l,3-heterocyclo[3,2-a]quinoline. The later one of these two ring systems is the only one that examples of it namely, l,3-thiazeto[3,2-a]quinoline have been reported. Moreover, examples of those fused on faces ij or j are not known (Fig. 3). 

The [5,5] (2Nl)-fused heterocyclic system contains four ring-carbon atoms, the fusion carbon atom and two and one carbon atom in the respective five-membered rings. 

Both cases with n = 0 and n = 1 in the Hiickel rule of 4n+2 jr-electrons can be achieved for four-member ed heterocyclic rings. However, the stability of the resulting system is low in either case, owing to ring strain, the adjacency of two X- or Z-type atoms, or the mesoaromatic character when such heteroatoms are not adjacent, as in 1,3-diborete. 

Penicillins are the most widely used of the clinical antibiotics. They contain in their structures an unusual fused ring system in which a four-membered P-lactam ring is fused onto a five-membered thiazolidine. Both rings are heterocyclic, and one of the ring fusion atoms is nitrogen. These heteroatoms do not alter our understanding of molecular shape, since we can consider that they also have an essentially tetrahedral array of bonds or lone pair electrons (see Section 2.6.3). 

The asymmetric structures which incorporate Al-0 edge-fused rings of different size all contain (AlO) metallocycles in which n = 2, 5 or, in an isolated instance, 8. The retention of at least one four-membered heterocycle n = 2) relates these systems to the symmetric polycycles discussed above in all but one aluminium oxide. 

Thietes, four-membered precursors for the synthesis of 1,3-dilhianes or 1,3-oxathianes, provide access to the target heterocycles by reacting with either carbon disulfide and Lil <2002IJB1234, 2003S340> or, when the ring system denoted in Scheme 110 is aromatic, with diethyl 2-oxomalonate via a [4-1-2] cycloaddition pathway <1998JHC1505>. 

Synthetic methods for the preparation of six-membered heterocyclic systems which proceed via the formation of three or four bonds are virtually restricted in application to the monocyclic heterocycles and have been most widely applied to pyridine and pyrimidine derivatives. In principle, reactions which proceed with the formation of three ring bonds can be sub-classified into three groups, namely, those involving [4 + 1 + 1] atom fragments, [3 + 2 + 1] atom fragments and [2 + 2 + 2] atom fragments. 

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