Nucleophiles, ambident types

The intermediacy of a carbocation or complex-equivalent is attractive, if one considers that the nucleophilic ambident cyanide ion may be accomodated on secondary or tertiary cationic sites. Where exceptions (e.g., 125,126,134-136 cf. Sect. 4.3) exist, the cationic intermediate resides on a primary allylic carbon. The following skeletal types are examples of some biogenetic schemes offered in conjunction with the structural determination of isocyanoterpenoids ... 

A mechanism of this type permits substitution of certain aromatic and ahphatic nitro compounds by a variety of nucleophiles. These reactions were discovered as the result of efforts to explain the mechanistic basis for high-yield carbon alkylation of the 2-nitropropane anion by p-nitrobenzyl chloride. p-Nitrobenzyl bromide and iodide and benzyl halides that do not contain a nitro substituent give mainly the unstable oxygen alkylation product with this ambident anion ... 

At room temperature under photostimulation a-nitrosulfones react with a variety of nucleophiles via radical anion chain reactions interestingly, in none of the cases where the PhSOj group is involved in SrnI type of substitution does the O end of the ambident anion " play a role. This strong regioselectivity is reminiscent of the one reported for other ambident anions involved in these radical chain substitutions. ... 

Besides direct nucleophilic attack onto the acceptor group, an activated diene may also undergo 1,4- or 1,6-addition in the latter case, capture of the ambident enolate with a soft electrophile can take place at two different positions. Hence, the nucleophilic addition can result in the formation of three regioisomeric alkenes, which may in addition be formed as E/Z isomers. Moreover, depending on the nature of nucleophile and electrophile, the addition products may contain one or two stereogenic centers, and, as a further complication, basic conditions may give rise to the isomerization of the initially formed 8,y-unsaturated carbonyl compounds (and other acceptor-substituted alkenes of this type) to the thermodynamically more stable conjugated isomer (Eq. 4.1). 

Heterocyclic secondary 183-type enamines (exocyclic vinylogous urethanes) show ambident bisnucleophilicity their nucleophilic reaction... 

Hydroxylamines and alkylhydroxylamines possess high nucleophilicity and can react with a variety of primary and secondary alkylating agents. The reactivity of hydroxylamines in the majority of these reactions resembles that of primary and secondary amines. While hydroxylamine and Af-alkylhydroxylamines 1 are ambident nucleophiles, under neutral or weakly basic reaction conditions alkylation proceeds exclusively on nitrogen atom to give products of type 2 (equation 1). Deprotonation of the OH group of hydroxylamines results in O-alkylation products. 

Hydroxamic acids undergo facile nucleophilic Ai-arylation with activated aryl halides such as 31 (equation 22). While hydroxamates are known to be ambident nucleophiles in alkylation reactions, arylation of hydroxylamines results exclusively in Ai-substituted hydroxamates of type 32 (equation 22)". ... 

In the new structures of type (59) the reactive centre is the methanide site which behaves as a nucleophile. <86JCS(Pi)ii57, 92JCS(P1)1483> (Section 4.17.8). Tautomeric tetrazole-tetrazoline structures of general type (4 R = H) may show ambident reactivity with reactions occurring on the ring or the exocyclic X atom (Sections 4.17.6 and 4.17.7). 

The 1,2,4-triazine ring is an ambident electrophile, and reacts with enamine-type nucleophiles. For example, addition of enamine 78 to a solution of triazine 77 in acetic anhydride furnished the pyrrolotriazine 31 (Equation 24) <2003TL2421>. 

Problem 14.44 Since (CH,)2S==0 is an ambident nucleophile, reaction with CHjI could give ((CH,),s =oir or [(CH3)jS=0—CH,]I. (a) What type of spectroscopy can be used to distinguish between the two products (b) Predict the major product. <... 

This means there are 42 entries that have the words AMBIDENT and NUCLEOPHILE somewhere in them in the titles, keywords, or index entries. We can now, if we wish, display any or all of them. But a particular entry might have these two words in unrelated contexts, e.g., it might be a paper about ambident electrophiles, but which also has NUCLEOPHILE as an index term. We would presumably get fewer papers, but with a higher percentage of relevent ones, if we could ask for AMBIDENT NUCLEOPHILE, and in fact, the system does allow this. If we type S AMBIDENT(W)NUCLEOPHILE, we will get only those papers in which the term NUCLEOPHILE directly follows AMBIDENT, with no words in between.41 This is called proximity searching, and there are other, similar commands. For example, the use of (4A) instead of (W) will give all instances in which the two words appear 4 or fewer words apart, in either order. 

Reactions of carbocations with free CN- occur preferentially at carbon, and not nitrogen as predicted by the principle of hard and soft acids and bases.69 Isocyano compounds (N-attack) are only formed with highly reactive carbocations where the reaction with cyanide occurs without an activation barrier because the diffusion limit has been reached. A study with the nitrite nucleophile led to a similar observation.70 This led to a conclusion that the ambident reactivity of nitrite in terms of charge control versus orbital control needs revision. In particular, it is proposed that SNl-type reactions of carbocations with nitrite only give kinetically controlled products when these reactions proceed without activation energy (i.e. are diffusion controlled). Activation controlled combinations are reversible and result in the thermodynamically more stable product. The kinetics of the reactions of benzhydrylium ions with alkoxides dissolved in the corresponding alcohols were determined.71 The order of nucleophilicities (OH- MeO- < EtO- < n-PrCT < / -PrO ) shows that alkoxides differ in reactivity only moderately, but are considerably more nucleophilic than hydroxide. 

Ambident anions are mesomeric, nucleophilic anions which have at least two reactive centers with a substantial fraction of the negative charge distributed over these cen-ters ) ). Such ambident anions are capable of forming two types of products in nucleophilic substitution reactions with electrophilic reactants . Examples of this kind of anion are the enolates of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds, phenolate, cyanide, thiocyanide, and nitrite ions, the anions of nitro compounds, oximes, amides, the anions of heterocyclic aromatic compounds e.g. pyrrole, hydroxypyridines, hydroxypyrimidines) and others cf. Fig. 5-17. 

As cyanide ions operate as ambident nucleophiles, alkylation reactions may generate isonitriles as well as nitriles (equation 2). A whole range of parameters is responsible for the outcome of reactions of this type and their particular role together with special counter influences is not easily evaluated. There is a large and growing number of papers on this topic, but one can concentrate here on a few selected review articles.Suffice it to say that Komblum s seminal article s from 1955 is still of special importance in this field. Pearson s principle of soft and hard acids and bases (HSAB) proved to be particularly helpful in the interpretation of experimental results. ... 

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