Iron vinylidenes protonation

Rapid development of this area followed the discovery of routes to these complexes, either by ready conversion of terminal alkynes to vinylidene complexes in reactions with manganese, rhenium, and the iron-group metal complexes (11-14) or by protonation or alkylation of some metal Recent work has demonstrated the importance of vinylidene complexes in the metabolism of some chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT) using iron porphyrin-based enzymes (15). Interconversions of alkyne and vinylidene ligands occur readily on multimetal centers. Several reactions involving organometallic reagents may proceed via intermediate vinylidene complexes. 

The base used may be hydroxide, alkoxide, carbonate, alkyl lithium, or alumina (13, 20, 24, 41, 49). The reaction is the reverse of the vinylidene synthesis by protonation of the n-acetylide, and the two complexes form a simple acid-base system. For the iron complexes in Eq. (2), the pK has been measured at 7.78 (in 2 1 thf-H20) (24). 

Acetylene-vinylidene rearrangements of silylacetylene-iron carbonyl complexes have been observed,537 while iron-acetylide hydride complexes of the type [Fe(H)(C=CR)(dmpe)2], where dmpe=l,2-bis(dimethylphosphino)ethane, have been found to react with anions to afford substituted alkenyl complexes. It has been proposed538 that a likely reaction course for this latter rearrangement involves initial protonation of the cr-bound acetylide ligand at the carbon (I to the metal centre to form a vinylidene complex. Metal-to-carbon hydride migration in this vinylidene complex with attack by the anion would then lead to the neutral complex (see Scheme 106). A detailed mechanistic investigation has been carried out539 on the novel metathetical... 

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