Lewis acids catalytic activity

Abstract The term Lewis acid catalysts generally refers to metal salts like aluminium chloride, titanium chloride and zinc chloride. Their application in asymmetric catalysis can be achieved by the addition of enantiopure ligands to these salts. However, not only metal centers can function as Lewis acids. Compounds containing carbenium, silyl or phosphonium cations display Lewis acid catalytic activity. In addition, hypervalent compounds based on phosphorus and silicon, inherit Lewis acidity. Furthermore, ionic liquids, organic salts with a melting point below 100 °C, have revealed the ability to catalyze a range of reactions either in substoichiometric amount or, if used as the reaction medium, in stoichiometric or even larger quantities. The ionic liquids can often be efficiently recovered. The catalytic activity of the ionic liquid is explained by the Lewis acidic nature of then-cations. This review covers the survey of known classes of metal-free Lewis acids and their application in catalysis. 

It is widely known that catalytic cracking of hydrocarbons takes place on the sites of the catalyst that possess the properties of Bronsted or Lewis acids catalytic activities for cracking and acidity run in parallel. 

The tailored dinuclear aluminium Lewis acid displayed a high Lewis-acid catalytic activity due to a double electrophilic activation of a substrate s carbonyl group. This skilful ligand design turned a standard alkoxide into a real multitool for carbonyl chemistry. This type of catalyst was employed for instance in Mukaiyama aldol reactions, in MPV reductions and Oppenauer oxidations and related Tischchenko coupling reactions. 

LA represents Lewis acid in the catalyst, and M represents Bren sled base. In Scheme 8-49, Bronsted base functionality in the hetero-bimetalic chiral catalyst I can deprotonate a ketone to produce the corresponding enolate II, while at the same time the Lewis acid functionality activates an aldehyde to give intermediate III. Intramolecular aldol reaction then proceeds in a chelation-controlled manner to give //-keto metal alkoxide IV. Proton exchange between the metal alkoxide moiety and an aromatic hydroxy proton or an a-proton of a ketone leads to the production of an optically active aldol product and the regeneration of the catalyst I, thus finishing the catalytic cycle. 

Trost s group reported direct catalytic enantioselective aldol reaction of unmodified ketones using dinuclear Zn complex 21 [Eq. (13.10)]. This reaction is noteworthy because products from linear aliphatic aldehydes were also obtained in reasonable chemical yields and enantioselectivity, in addition to secondary and tertiary alkyl-substituted aldehydes. Primary alkyl-substituted aldehydes are normally problematic substrates for direct aldol reaction because self-aldol condensation of the aldehydes complicates the reaction. Bifunctional Zn catalysis 22 was proposed, in which one Zn atom acts as a Lewis acid to activate an aldehyde and the other Zn-alkoxide acts as a Bronsted base to generate a Zn-enolate. The... 

Snapper and Hoveyda reported a catalytic enantioselective Strecker reaction of aldimines using peptide-based chiral titanium complex [Eq. (13.11)]. Rapid and combinatorial tuning of the catalyst structure is possible in their approach. Based on kinetic studies, bifunctional transition state model 24 was proposed, in which titanium acts as a Lewis acid to activate an imine and an amide carbonyl oxygen acts as a Bronsted base to deprotonate HCN. Related catalyst is also effective in an enantioselective epoxide opening by cyanide "... 

The authors also investigated the mode of activation of these BINOL-derived catalysts. They proposed an oligomeric structure, in which one Ln-BINOL moiety acts as a Brpnsted base, that deprotonates the hydroperoxide and the other moiety acts as Lewis acid, which activates the enone and controls its orientation towards the oxidant . This model explains the observed chiral amplification effect, that is the ee of the epoxide product exceeds the ee of the catalyst. The stereoselective synthesis of cw-epoxyketones from acyclic cw-enones is difficult due to the tendency of the cw-enones to isomerize to the more stable fraw5-derivatives during the oxidation. In 1998, Shibasaki and coworkers reported that the ytterbium-(f )-3-hydroxymethyl-BINOL system also showed catalytic activity for the oxidation of aliphatic (Z)-enones 129 to cw-epoxides 130 with good yields... 

In aromatic systems, the Lewis acids which activate via coordination are also capable of activating the aromatic system by the formation of a and ir complexes. There are a sufficient number of examples available to indicate that the activation via the latter processes is the more important of these, where all are present. Olivier (52) showed in 1913 that the kinetic behavior of such reactions consists of two portions. When the catalyst, say aluminum chloride, is present in less than the amount required to complex all the functional groups, the reaction is relatively slow and the catalytic activity is due to the small amount of Lewis acid resulting from the dissociation of the complex. As soon as all the functional groups are coordinated, any additional Lewis acid is found to accelerate the rate enormously. In these electrophilic substitutions it seems highly probable that the the activation involves the pi electron system of the benzene ring. Olivier studied the reaction sequence ... 

Studies of catalytic asymmetric Mukaiyama aldol reactions were initiated in the early 1990s. Until recently, however, there have been few reports of direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reactions [1]. Several groups have reported metallic and non-metallic catalysts for direct aldol reactions. In general, a metallic catalysis involves a synergistic function of the Bronsted basic and the Lewis acidic moieties in the catalyst (Scheme 2). The Bronsted basic moiety abstracts an a-pro-ton of the ketone to generate an enolate (6), and the Lewis acidic moiety activates the aldehyde (3). 

Our proposed transition state model for this catalytic enantioselective cyanosilylation of ketone is shown as 35.30a The titanium acts as a Lewis acid to activate the substrate ketone, while the phosphine oxide acts as a Lewis base to activate TMSCN. The intramolecular transfer of the activated cyanide to the activated ketone should give the ( )-cyanohydrin in high selectivity. The successful results described above clearly demonstrate the practicality of our asymmetric catalyst for cyanosilylation of ketones. 

Next, the mechanism of the Type II reactions is discussed. To discriminate one of the enantiofaces of the acceptor it is desirable to place and to activate the electrophiles in a chiral environment. At the same time, effective activation of the Michael donor is required. In Shibasaki s ALB-catalyzed reaction (Scheme 3), it was proposed that the aluminum cation functioned as a Lewis acid to activate enones at the center of the catalyst, and that the Li-naphthoxide moiety deproton-ated the a-hydrogen of malonate to form the Li enolate (Scheme 9). Such simultaneous activation of both reactants at precisely defined positions became feasible by using multifunctional heterobimetallic complexes the mechanism is reminiscent of that which is operative in the active sites of enzymes. The observed absolute stereochemistry can be understood in terms of the proposed transition state model 19. Importantly, addition of a catalytic amount of KOt-Bu (0.9equiv. to ALB) was effective in acceleration of the reaction rate with no deterioration of the... 

The Mukaiyama aldol reaction of carbonyl substrates with silyl enol ethers is the most widely accepted of Lewis acid-promoted reactions. Many Lewis acids for the reaction have been developed and used enantioselectively and diastereoselectively. In 1980, catalytic amounts of la were found by Noyori et al. to effect aldol-type condensation between acetals and a variety of silyl enol ethers with high stereoselectivity [2c,20]. Unfortunately, la has poor Lewis acidity for activation of aldehydes in Mukaiyama s original aldol reaction [21]. Hanaoka et al. showed the scope and limitation of 11-cat-alyzed Mukaiyama aldol reaction, by varying the alkyl groups on the silicon atom of silyl enol ethers [22]. Several efforts have been since been made to increase the reactivity and/or the Lewis acidity of silicon. One way to enhance the catalyst activity is to use an additional Lewis acid. 

The catalytic asymmetric epoxidation of a,/5-unsaturated ketones with hydroperoxides such as tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) and cumene hydroperoxide (CMHP) can be carried out at ambient temperature by using alkali-metal free Ln-BINOL complexes (eq. (22)) [184]. The oligomeric structure of the catalyst is assumed to play a key role that is, the Ln alkoxide moiety acts as a Brpnsted base, activating a hydroperoxide molecule, while another Ln metal ion acts as a Lewis acid, both activating and controlling the orientation of the enone. 

In a simplified catalytic cycle, reversible coordination of the dienophile to the Lewis acid (LA) activates the substrate toward diene cycloaddition. In the catalyst turnover event, the Lewis acid-product complex dissociate to reveal the de-complexed cycloadduct and regenerated catalyst (Scheme 2). While this catalytic cycle neglects issues of product inhibition and nonproductive catalyst binding for dienophiles having more than one Lewis basic site, the gross features of this process are less convoluted than many other enantioselective reactions e.g., olefin dihydroxylation, aldol reactions), a fact which may provide insight as to why this process is frequently used as a test reaction for new Lewis acid catalysts. 

The X-ray structural studies offer strong evidence in support of a Lewis acid catalytic role for the active site zinc ion in peptide hydrolysis. Since the carbonyl group is no doubt a much weaker dipole than HaO, the initial (ground-state) interaction between the zinc ion and the substrate carbonyl oxygen must be stabilized by the summation of the weak bonding forces between enz5mie and substrate. The result is to displace the transition-state of the enzyme-catalyzed reaction (relative to its hypothetical nonenzymatic cormterpart) along the reaction coordinate toward the enzyme-substrate complex. 

Tovrog BS, Diamond SE, Mares F, SzaUdewicz A (1981) Activation of cobalt-nitro complexes by lewis-acids - catalytic-oxidation of alcohols by molecular-oxygen. J Am Chem Soc 103 3522-3526... 

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