Insertion bound ketones

One pervasive mechanistic feature of many of the hydrogenations described in other chapters of this handbook concerns the bonding of the unsaturated substrate to a metal center. As illustrated in generalized form in Eq. (1) for the hydrogenation of a ketone, a key step in the traditional mechanism of hydrogenation is migratory insertion of the bound substrate into a metal hydride bond (M-H). 

The second example is a rhodium(II)-catalysed decomposition of an a-diazo ketone (71). This interaction generated a metal-bound carbene that appears to undergo CH-insertion when tethered to thiophenes the product (72) was an aromatic tricycle. The direct CH-insertion mechanism is probably excluded by the reaction of (73). Treatment of (73) with a rhodium catalyst gave rise to a bicyclic system (75) with a pendant ketene group. The ketene appears to have migrated the authors suggested a mechanism via ketene (74), being formed by nucleophilic attack of the enol ether on the electrophilic carbene. ... 

Hayashi and Miyaura pioneered the enantioselective rhodium-catalyzed conjugate addition of arylboronic acids to a variety of Michael acceptors a,P-unsaturated ketones, esters, lactones, amides, and lactams [215]. Generally, water is used as a cosolvent and plays a key role in the catalytic cycle, illustrated in Scheme 5.111 (cycle A) for the conjugate addition of phenylboronic acid to cyclohexenone that, when catalyzed by the Rh(I)-(S)-BINAP complex, leads to 3-phenylcyclohexanone in 97% ee and 93% chemical yield [205a]. The key intermediates of the catalytic cycle, the hydroxorhodium complex 433, the phenylrhodium complex 434, and -bound rhodium enolate 435 were characterized by NMR spectroscopy. The reaction of the hydrorhodium complex 433 with phenylboronic acid leads to a transmetallation to give the phenylrhodium complex 434. Then, the insertion of the carbon-carbon double bond of cyclohexenone into the phenylrhodium bond leads to the formation of the... 

---