Ketones hydride donor additions

In Section 6.5 you learned that the acylations of hydride donors or of organometallic compounds, which give aldehydes or ketones, often are followed by an unavoidable second reaction the addition of the hydride or organometallic compound to the aldehyde or the ketone. In this chapter, we will study the intentional execution of such addition reactions. 

The addition of a hydride donor to an aldehyde or to a ketone gives an alcohol. This addition is therefore also a redox reaction, namely, the reduction of a carbonyl compound to an alcohol. Nevertheless, this type of reaction is discussed here and not in the redox chapter (Chapter 17). 

In the addition of hydride donors to aldehydes (other than formaldehyde) the tetrahedral intermediate is a primary alkoxide. In the addition to ketones it is a secondary alkoxide. When a primary alkoxide is formed, the steric hindrance is smaller. Also, when the C=0 double bond of an aldehyde is broken due to the formation of the CH(0 M ) group of an alkoxide, less stabilization of the C=0 double bond by the flanking alkyl group is lost than when the analogous transformation occurs in a ketone (cf. Table 9.1). For these two reasons aldehydes react faster with hydride donors than ketones. With a moderately reactive hydride donor such as NaBH4 at low temperature one can even chemoselectively reduce an aldehyde in the presence of a ketone (Figure 10.6, left). 

The so-called 1,4-addition (for the term see Figure 10.31) of hydride donors to a,j3-unsat-urated ketones yielding an enolate as the primary product and, after protic workup, a saturated ketone, is also known. A hydride donor that reduces unsaturated ketones in this manner is L-Selectride , which has been mentioned several times. An example of this type of reaction is given in the lower half of Figure 13.20. 

When the plane of the double bond of a carbonyl compound is flanked by diastereotopic halfspaces, a stereogenic addition of a hydride can take place diastereoselectively (cf. Section 3.4.1). In Section 10.3.1, we will investigate which diastereomer is preferentially produced in such additions to the C=0 double bond of cyclic ketones. In Sections 10.3.2 and 10.3.3, we will discuss which diastereomer is preferentially formed in stereogenic additions of hydride donors and acyclic chiral ketones or acyclic chiral aldehydes. 

Fig. 10.9. Diastereoselective addition of a bulky hydride donor (L-Selectride) to a bicyclic ketone. The endo-alcohol is formed exclusively.

Diastereoselectivity of the Addition of Hydride Donors to Cyclic Ketones... 

Figure 10.9 shows an application of this principle in the diastereoselective addition of a hydride donor to a bicyclic ketone With L-Selectride [= Li BH(sec-Bu)3] the endo-alcohol is produced exclusively. 

Other cyclic or bicyclic ketones do not have a convex side but only a less concave and a more concave side. Thus, a hydride donor can add to such a carbonyl group only from a concave side. Because of the steric hindrance, this normally results in a decrease in the reactivity. However, the addition of this hydride donor is still less disfavored when it takes place from the less concave (i.e., the less hindered) side. As shown in Figure 10.10 (top) by means of the comparison of two reductions of norbomanone, this effect is more noticeable for a bulky hydride donor such as L-Selectride than for a small hydride donor such as NaBH4. As can be seen from Figure 10.10 (bottom), the additions of all hydride donors to the norbomanone derivative B (camphor) take place with the opposite diastereoselectivity. As indicated for each substrate, the common selectivity-determining factor remains the principle that the reaction with hydride takes place preferentially from the less hindered side of the molecule. 

The addition of a hydride donor to an a-chiral aldehyde with an O or an N atom in the a position or to an analogous ketone takes place through the so-called Felkin-Anh transition state provided that the heteroatom at C-a is not incorporated in a five-membered chelate ring together with the O atom of the carbonyl group. This transition state is also shown in Figure 10.16 (center Nu = H ), both as a Newman projection and in the sawhorse... 

The hydride donor of the Noyori reduction of ketones is the hydrido aluminate K-BINAE-H shown in Figure 10.23 or its enantiomer S-BINAL-H. The new C—H hond is presumably formed via a cyclic six-memhered transition state of stereostructure A. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to rationalize why enantioselectivity in this kind of addition is limited to substrates in which the carbonyl group is flanked by one conjugated substituent (C=C, aryl, C=C). The suggestion that has been made is that a lone pair on the axial oxygen of the BINOL unit in the transition state undergoes a repulsive interaction with pi electrons in the unsaturated ketone if the latter is also axial. 

The addition of a hydride donor to an a-chiral aldehyde with an OR or NR2 substituent at C-a or to an analogous ketone takes place via the so-called Cram chelate... 

Stereogenic additions of hydride donors to achiral deuterated aldehydes R—C(=0)D or to achiral ketones R1R2C(=0) take place without stereocontrol using the reagents which you learned about in Section 8.3. Thus, racemic deuterated alcohols R—C(OH) D or racemic secondary alcohols R1R2C(OH)H are produced. The reason for this is... 

Finally, there are also some special NHC-mediated transformations that do not completely fit into the classification, such as triazolylidene-catalyzed hydroacylations (Chan and Scheldt 2006). Aldehydes can serve as hydride donors for activated ketones partly following a standard 1,2-addition of the NHC to the aldehyde, but instead of the usual carbonyl umpolung a hydride ( H-umpolung ) transfer is initiated. A related Cannizzaro-type transformation has been described for indazole-derived carbene catalysts (Schmidt et al. 2007). 

Ryu, Sonoda and coworkers reported that tris(trimethylsilyl)silane is a useful mediator for a three-component coupling reaction [45]. Table 4 summarizes examples of radical carbonylations mediated by (TMS)3SiH. The first example shows a three-component coupling reaction in which hexyl iodide, CO, and acrylonitrile combine to form a P-cymo ketone. The CO addition step is in competition with the addition to the alkene and the hydrogen abstraction from radical mediator. Thus, it is anticipated that a set of less efficient hydrogen donors, such as (TMS)3SiH, and the use of a smaller excess amount of an alkene is most favorable. Indeed, the reaction can be carried out at only 20 30 atm of CO pressure, substantially below the 80-90 atm which is used for carbonylative acyl radical reactions which are mediated by tin hydride, and a nearly stoichiometric amount (1.2 equiv) of acrylonitrile is sufficient. Some other examples, which include vinyl radical carbonylation, are also shown in Table 4. 

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