Organocopper compounds, reactions

Organocopper compounds have been trapped by coordination with organic bases. In addition, arylcopper compounds (ArCu) have been independently prepared and shown to give biaryls (ArAr ) when treated with aryl iodides (Ar I). A similar reaction has been used for ring closure. 

Alkynylcoppers constitute a class of compounds relevant to several synthetic organic reactions,47 where they have been proposed as key intermediates. The interest in this area has supposed that the number of structurally characterized alkynylcopper complexes has considerably expanded in the last few years. The most common route toward alkynylcoppers is based on the reaction of a terminal alkyne with a copper source, either a salt or an organocopper compound (Equations (8) and (9)). 

Cyanocuprates constitute a class of organocopper compounds that finds applications in organic synthesis.234 They are prepared by the direct reaction of an organolithium reagent and CuCN, with two different types of compounds being prepared depending on the stoichiometry employed the 1 1 ratio leads to RCu(CN)Li compounds whereas the 2 1 mixture affords R2Gu(GN)Li2. The lower- order or 1 1 cyanocuprates usually display the Cu-C-N-Li... 

Generally, organocopper compounds can be prepared by transmetallation between copper salts and organometallic reagents such as RLi, RMgX, and RZnX.53,53a,53b Copper alkynides can be obtained by reaction of terminal alkynes... 

In solution, organocopper compounds may exist as an equilibrium of several species, and a loss of enantioselectivity may be inevitable if this equilibrium process produces some achiral but more reactive cuprate species. The way to overcome this problem is to develop a highly reactive chiral reagent to suppress the undesired, nonchiral species-mediated reactions. 

In these transformations, organocopper compounds are often the reagents of choice, although recently other metals such as aluminum, titanium, samarium and indium have also proven to be highly useful. Since earlier contributions to this field have already been summarized extensively [1], we shall concentrate on more recent contributions published after 1980. Rather than trying to be comprehendsive, representative examples with references to the most important reaction types will be given. 

As in the case of addition reactions of carbon nucleophiles to activated dienes (Section HA), organocopper compounds are the reagents of choice for regio- and stereoselective Michael additions to acceptor-substituted enynes. Substrates bearing an acceptor-substituted triple bond besides one or more conjugated double bonds react with organocuprates under 1,4-addition exclusively (equation 51)138-140 1,6-addition reactions which would provide allenes after electrophilic capture were not observed (cf. Section IV). 

An illustrative example is the formation of the symmetric biaryl from the reaction between CuC6H4NMe2-2 and IC6H4NMe2-2, which has been studied in detail in the authors laboratory [95]. When this reaction is carried out in benzene as a solvent, the reaction stops when one third of the original organocopper compound has been consumed (Eqn. 1 in Scheme 1.20). 

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