Neopentyl iodide synthesis

Organometallic compounds of magnesium, mercury, or lithium have been treated with iodine or bromine to form organic halides. The method has been successful for obtaining neopentyl iodide where other methods have failed (92%). It has been found convenient in the synthesis of 9-iodoanthracene (53%) and certain heterocyclic halides. ... 

A general method fen the synthesis of alkyl iodides is the reaction of tosylates or methanesulfonates with sodium iodide in acetone or magnesium iodide in diethyl ether (equation 30). The reaction is not always a clean Sn2 process. Stereoselectively deuterated neopentyl tosylate, for example, gives with Nal in HMPA only low yields (34%) of the racemic iodide (equation 31). This is in contrast to analogous reactions with bromide and chloride (see Sections 1.7.3.2 and 1.7.2.2), where better yields with complete inversion are observed. 

Another interesting use of TEMPO has been in free-radical substitution of alkyl halides. In this reaction, halides react with tributyltin hydride and TEMPO to yield A-alkoxyamine substitution products [18. This reaction is especially attractive in cases where anionic nucleophiles are sterically prevented from carrying out substitution reactions. An example of this can be seen in Barrett s synthesis of sucrose [18b], in which a stereoselective iodoetherification reaction was used to produce neopentyl alkyl iodide 13 (Scheme 5). Free radical substitution mediated by tributyltin hydride and TEMPO yielded A-alkoxyamine 14. The mechanism [19] involves TEMPO abstraction of hydrogen from tributyltin hydride [20] the stannyl radical then abstracts iodide from the substrate, and a second equivalent of TEMPO traps the resulting carbon radical. 

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