Lithium reagents, with phosphorus esters

Tris(trimethylsilyl)phosphine and its more reactive derivative lithium bis-(trimethylsilyl)phosphide-2tetrahydrofuran are very useful reagents for the preparation of compounds with a single or a multiple element phosphorus bond. They react readily with various element halides, with carboxylic acid chlorides, and with carboxylic esters, as well as with other organic electrophiles via a substitution of lithium and/or a cleavage of the weak polar Si-P bonds. 

A less common approach to the synthesis of phosphinates is the reaction of electrophilic phosphonates with carbon nucleophiles such as Grignard reagents or lithium enolates. For example, the phosphinic acid analogue 71 of the amino acid statine was synthesized by displacement of tert-butyl lithioacetate on a 5-phenyl phosphonothioate 70 (Scheme 23)d104l The racemic diastereomers of the 5-phenyl phosphonothioate were obtained in pure form, and the displacement of the phenylsulfanyl moiety was found to be stereospecific, although the stereocenter at phosphorus would later be lost on hydrolysis of the ester. A similar displacement reaction has been described using the p h osp h on och I ori d ate.1711... 

Besides processes (1) and (2), the reader should be aware that nucleophilic attacks on alkynes are treated in other chapters of this book, dealing with rearrangements, cyclizations, polyacetylenes, cyclic acetylenes and perhaps others. A number of publications overlap with ours in different ways and at different levels -. They treat individual alkynes or families " , e.g. acetylene, diacetylenes , acetylene dicarboxylic esters haloacetylenes , alkynyl ethers and thioethers > ynamines , fluoro-alkynes ethynyl ketpnes , nitroalkynes , etc. synthetic targets, e.g. pyrazoles , if-l,2,3-triazoles , isothiazoles , indolizines S etc. reagents, e.g. nitrones , lithium aluminium hydride , heterocyclic A -oxides - , azomethine ylids - , tertiary phosphorus compounds , miscellaneous dipolar nucleophiles - , etc. The reader will appreciate that all of these constitute alternate entries into our subject. 

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