Hydrocyanation aluminum catalysts

Formamide decomposes thermally either to ammonia and carbon monoxide or to hydrocyanic acid and water. Temperatures around 100°C are critical for formamide, in order to maintain the quaUty requited. The lowest temperature range at which appreciable decomposition occurs is 180—190°C. Boiling formamide decomposes at atmospheric pressure at a rate of about 0.5%/min. In the absence of catalysts the reaction forming NH and CO predominates, whereas hydrocyanic acid formation is favored in the presence of suitable catalysts, eg, aluminum oxides, with yields in excess of 90% at temperatures between 400 and 600°C. 

The assymetric Strecker reaction of diverse imines, including aldimines as well as ketoimines, with HCN or TMSCN provides a direct access to various unnatural and natural amino acids in high enantiomeric excesses, using soluble or resin-linked non-metal Schiff bases the corresponding chiral catalysts are obtained and optimized by parallel combinatorial library synthesis [93]. A rather general asymmetric Strecker-type synthesis of various imines and a, 9-unsaturated derivatives is catalyzed by chiral bifunctional Lewis acid-Lewis base aluminum-containing complexes [94]. When chiral (salen)Al(III) complexes are employed for the hydrocyanation of aromatic substituted imines, excellent yields and enatio-selectivities are obtained [94]. 

Imidoyl chlorides are also intermediates in the Gattermann aldehyde synthesis and in the Houben-Hoesch ketone synthesis. The former reaction uses hydrocyanic acid, hydrogen chloride, and aluminum chloride as the catalyst, while in the latter reaction nitriles, hydrogen chloride, and zinc chloride are used. Hoesch in 1915 assumed that the nitriles combine with hydrogen chloride to form imidoyl chlorides, which undergo electrophilic substitution reaction with a wide variety of substrates. Stephen verified Hoesch s hypothesis by reacting phenylbenzimidoyl chloride with resorcinol, and he obtained the intermediate anil CLIX, which can be hydrolyzed to the corresponding ketone (CLX). 

The use of a co-catalyst was crucial to the development of practical hydrocyana-tion. The rate and catalyst lifetime for hydrocyanation of simple alkenes increases dramatically by conducting the reactions in the presence of a Lewis acid. As shown in Table 16.1, the reaction of propene occurs much faster in the presence of aluminum and zinc halides. Lewis acid cocatalysts also promote isomerization and selective additions during some steps of the hydrocyanation of butadiene. This effect is presented later in this section. 

Recently, hydrocyanation and cyanosilylation reactions with other type of chiral aluminum complexes were reported. In 1999, Shibasaki and Kanai reported enantioselective cyanosilylation of aldehydes catalyzed by Lewis acid-Lewis base bifunctional catalyst (64a) [56, 57]. In this catalyst, aluminum center works as a Lewis acid to activate the carbonyl group, and the oxygen atom of the phosphine oxide works as a Lewis base to activate TMSCN. Asymmetric induction was explained by the proposed transition state model having the external phosphine oxide coordination to aluminum center, thus giving rise to pentavalent aluminum... 

Hydrocyanation to imines with HCN, the Strecker reaction, is one of the most direct and efficient methods for natural and unnatural a-amino acids. Asymmetric Strecker-type reaction with chiral aluminum Lewis acids has been developed. As shown in Scheme 6.48, the research group of Jacobsen reported chiral Al(salen)Cl complex (67a) as an effective asymmetric catalyst for catalytic enantioselective Strecker reaction of aromatic N-allylimines with HCN [62]. Compared to the reactions of aromatic imines, that of a-branched aliphatic imines (R = Cy and t-Bu) gave Strecker products in only moderate optical yield. Additionally, the use of TMSCN instead of HCN dramatically reduced in the enantioselectivity. 

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