Ketones titanocene-catalyzed reduction

TiTANOCENE-CATALYZED reduction of ketones in the presence of WATER. 

TITANOCENE-CATALYZED REDUCTION OF KETONES IN THE PRESENCE OF WATER. A CONVENIENT PROCEDURE FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF ALCOHOLS VIA FREE-RADICAL CHEMISTRY... 

Titanocene dichloride catalyzes the reduction of alkyl, aryl, and vinyl bromides, aryl chlorides, alkoxy- and halosilanes ketones, esters, and carboxylic acids with alkyl Grignard reagents. This Cp2TiCl2/RMgX system can also be used for the hydromagnesation of alkynes, dienes, and alkenes (Section 3.2.5). Kambe et al. have reported a new type of titanocene-catalyzed transformation with vinyl Grignard reagents and chlorosilanes to furnish l,4-disilyl-2-butenes, as shown in Scheme 3.43 [31]. 

Since the introduction of the titanocene chloride dimer 67a to radical chemistry, much attention has been paid to render these reactions catalytic. This field was reviewed especially thoroughly for epoxides as substrates [123, 124, 142-145] so only catalyzed reactions using non-epoxide precursors and a few very recent examples of titanium-catalyzed epoxide-based cyclization reactions, which illustrate the principle, will be discussed here. A very useful feature of these reactions is that their rate constants were determined very recently [146], The reductive catalytic radical generation using 67a is not limited to epoxides. Oxetanes can also act as suitable precursors as demonstrated by pinacol couplings and reductive dimerizations [147]. Moreover, 5 mol% of 67a can serve as a catalyst for the 1,4-reduction of a, p-un saturated carbonyl compounds to ketones using zinc in the presence of triethylamine hydrochloride to regenerate the catalyst [148]. 

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