Carbenoids lithium

Simmons-Smith reagent that contradicts path B, and path A has therefore been widely believed to represent the experimental reality. For lithium carbenoids, on the other hand, the alternative carbometalation/cyclisation pathway has received experimental support. Actually, the factors that determine the... 

Various alkyl- and aryl-substituted [3]radialenes could be prepared from 1,1-dihaloal-kenes using organometallic pathways. Hexamethyl-[3]radialene (25), the first [3]radialene to be synthesized, was obtained in a very low yield by treatment of l,l-dibromo-2-methyl-1-propene (22) with butyllithium8,9. The lithium carbenoid 23 and the butatriene 24 are likely intermediates of this transformation (Scheme 2), the former being the source of an unsaturated carbene moiety which is transferred onto the latter. However, the outer double bonds of 24 are more readily cyclopropanated than the central one. 

It appears that neither the lithium carbenoid pathway nor the cyclopropanation of buta-trienes are general routes to [3]radialenes. More successful is the cyclotrimerization of 1,1-dihaloalkenes via copper or nickel carbenoids, provided the substituents at the other end of the C=C double bond are not too small. Thus, tris(fluoren-9-ylidene)cyclopropane 27 was formed besides butatriene 28 from the (l-bromo-l-alkenyl)cuprate 26 generated in situ from (9-dibromomethylene)fluorene (Scheme 3)10. The cuprate complexes formed... 

Thus, only few reports were disclosed for the [1,3] Brook isomerization Utimoto, Oshima and coworkers have reported that the treatment of tert-butyldimethyl(dibromomethyl)silane 64 with LDA followed by the addition of an excess of benzaldehyde lead to the 1,3-diol monosilyl ether 66 via the intermediacy of lithium carbenoid 65 (equation 24) . The rate of isomerization was dependent on the solvent used and HMPA was found to be the best solvent. ... 

The particular substitution pattern of lithium carbenoids, the fact that both an electropositive metal and an electronegative substituent X are bound to the same carbon atom, causes the ambiphilic character of this species. The chameleon-like reactivity becomes evident from the resonance formulas of the carbenoid lb (equation 1) Whereas the carbanionic character is expressed by the resonance formula la, the electrophilic character is represented by Ic. In an analogous way, the reactivity of vinylidene carbenoids 2b is expressed by the mesomeric structures 2a and 2c. 

The electrophilic reactivity of lithium carbenoids (reaction b) becomes evident from their reaction with alkyl lithium compounds. A, probably metal-supported, nucleophilic substitution occurs, and the leaving group X is replaced by the alkyl group R with inversion of the configuration . This reaction, typical of metal carbenoids, is not restricted to the vinylidene substitution pattern, but occurs in alkyl and cycloalkyl lithium carbenoids as well ". With respect to the a-heteroatom X, the carbenoid character is... 

SCHEME 2. Typical downfield shifts in C-NMR spectra of lithium carbenoids... 

The deshielding of the resonance in lithium carbenoids is explained by the polarization of the elongated C—X bond and shows that the carbocationic structures Ic and 2c have to be taken into account. The postulated high s character of the C—Li bond is also confirmed by the NMR-spectroscopic investigations insofar as enhanced C- Li coupling constants have been observed in lithium carbenoids . Thus, the effect of the metalation that leads to the formation of lithium carbenoids can be summarized as follows (Scheme 3) . 

The hypothesis of a particular hybridization of the carbon center in lithium carbenoids has been confirmed by recent X-ray structure analyses performed by Boche and coworkers. To date, the crystal structures of two chloro-substituted and several oxygen-substituted... 

SCHEME 3. Eeatures of lithium carbenoids and their effect on the NMR data... 

SCHEME 4. Stmctures of lithium carbenoid 3 and the magnesium carbenoid 4... 

SCHEME 6. Crystal structures of a-oxygen-substituted lithium carbenoids Uthiated benzofuran 8 and carbamate 9... 

The question of configurational stability has been investigated first for vinylidene carbenoids and, more recently, for alkylcarbenoids. Vinyl anions are usually considered to be configurationally stable" ° the calculated inversion barrier of the ethenyl anion 10 (R = H) is about 35 kcal mol (equation 4)" . Concerning lithioalkenes, this configurational stability has been confirmed experimentally for a-hydrogen, a-alkyl and a-aryl substituted derivatives . The inversion of vinylidene lithium carbenoids was already... 

SCHEME 7. Test of the configurational stability of alkyl hthium carbenoids (a) fast equilibrium between enantiomeric lithium carbenoids (b) configurational stable hthium carbenoid 13... 

Configurational stability has also been confirmed for various metalated carbamates by Hoppe and coworkers. Remarkably, carbamate-protected alcohols such as 20 are deprotonated enantioselectively, when treated with i-butyllithium in the presence of (—)-sparteine. The lithium carbenoids like 21 (R = alkyl) thus generated turn out to retain their configuration (equation 11). Similar results have been obtained for a-lithiated amines and carbamate protected amines " . As a rule, dipole stabilization of the organolithium compounds in general also enhances the configurational stability of a-oxygen-substituted lithium carbenoids. 

III. LITHIUM CARBENOIDS AS REACTIVE INTERMEDIATES IN SYNTHESIS A. Generation of Lithium Carbenoids... 

Chelation is another driving force that provides diastereoselective bromine-lithium exchange reactions to give cyclopropyl carbenoids. Thus, the exo-bromine atom in dibro-mocyclopropane 25 is exchanged exclusively due to the methoxy substituent, which encourages the lithium to occupy the cis orientation (equation 16) ° Several representative examples of cyclopropyl bromo lithium carbenoids obtained by bromine-lithium exchange reactions are given in Table 1. 

Due to the acidifying effect of a second halogen atom, dihalo-snbstituted lithium carbenoids 30 can be obtained by deprotonation of geminal dihaloalkanes, the most frequently applied method for the generation of lithium carbenoids with this snbstimtion... 

Recently, two more stereoselective cases of bromine-lithium exchange reactions have been observed. Both the glyceraldehyde-derived bromoalkene 45 and lactaldehyde-derived 47 yield the -configurated lithium carbenoids 46 and 48, respectively, when treated with... 

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