Magnesium alkoxides, nitrile oxide

Several strategies have been proposed to improve the regioselectivity of nitrile oxide cycloaddition. Kanemasa and coworkers have reported high-rate acceleration and regioselectivity in nitrile oxide cycloadditions to the magnesium alkoxides of allylic and homoallylic alcohols (Eq. 8.64)."... 

Since a magnesium alkoxide undergoes rapid ligand exchange with free alcohols even in dichloromethane at ambient temperature, the regiocontrol of nitrile oxide cycloadditions of multisubstituted allylic alcohols can be effectively attained... 

N/L recorded was 16,000 for the reactions using the magnesium alkoxide of 3-methyl-2-buten-l-ol as a multisubstituted internal allylic alcohol substrate, which is why regiocontrol is still effective in the reactions in a highly coordinating solvent such as THF. Rate enhancement is much lower in the nitrile oxide cycloaddition reactions using homoallylic alcohol substrates. 

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