Aggregation organolithium compounds

Since Lewis base additives and basic solvents such as tetrahydrofuran are known to deaggregate polymeric organolithium compounds, (21,23,26) it was postulated that ketone formation would be minimized in the presence of sufficient tetrahydrofuran to effect dissociation of the aggregates. In complete accord with these predictions, it was found that the carbonation of poly(styryl)lithium (eq. 9), poly(isoprenyl)-lithium, and poly(styrene-b-isoprenyl)lithium in a 75/25 mixture (by volume) of benzene and tetrahydrofuran occurs quantitatively to produce the carboxylic acid chain ends (8 ). 

There are multiple systems for naming organolithium compounds. In one, CeHsLi is named phenyl lithium and w-C4H9Li is w-butyl lithium. In another, these species are named Uthiobenzene and 1-lithiobutane, respectively, when the lithium atom is regarded as a substituent on the hydrocarbon parent. A third nomenclature approach assumes these species are ionic salts, e.g. the above two compounds are called lithium phenylide and lithium butylide. We will bypass any questions of aggregation by referring to these compounds by their monomeric names (e.g. phenyl lithium and not dimeric phenyl lithium, phenyl lithium dimer nor diphenyl dilithium), and where monomeric species are actually meant, we will make this explicit. 

It has been found that the Li quadrupole parameters x( Li) and /]( Li) are sensitive probes of solid state structures of organolithium compounds, for example with respect to aggregate size, solvation, ion pair structure and the X-Li-X structural angle. These results will be discussed in the following sections. 

Fractional kinetic orders of homogenous reactions in solution may point to association of a particular reagent. The kinetics of the initiation step of styrene polymerization in the presence of n-BuLi (equation 33) is in accordance with the assumption that this organolithium compound in a nonbonding solvent forms aggregates of six molecules on the average" . 

For the above reasons, organolithium compounds and complexes have been termed supramolecules [ complex molecules held together by noncovalent bonds (4) ]. What we have here are ionically bonded (at least as far as the central metal-organic anion linkages are concerned) yet often discrete molecular species. Most of their physical properties reflect their limited aggregation and their organic peripheries. These points are stressed in Fig. 3, a schematic presentation of the major structural types of uncomplexed organic lithium compounds. 

Arenes cannot usually be deprotonated with LDA alone, but require mixtures of organosodium [365] or organolithium compounds and tertiary amines [181, 218, 219]. These amines, for instance TMEDA, lead to a partial dissociation of oligomeric BuLi-solvent aggregates and thereby to more powerful metalating reagents [366, 367]. Thus, although benzene cannot be deprotonated with BuLi alone, a mixture of BuLi and TMEDA leads to quantitative lithiation [181]. 

Organolithium compounds occur in solution as dimeric, tetrameric, or hexameric aggregates held together by electron-deficient bridge bonds (14). The actual degree of association depends on the alkyl group involved and the solvent. The nature of the association in these derivatives permits two types of exchange ... 

Among unsolvated organolithium compounds only the alkyllithiums are soluble in noncoordinating solvents such as alkanes and arenes. Their states of aggregation depend on the structure close to lithium. Thus primary, tertiary and secondary alkyllithiums, all unsolvated, assemble into respectively hexamers, tetramers and equilibrium mixtures of hexamers and tetramers. Most organolithium compounds dissolve in and coordinate with donor compounds such as ethers and tertiary amines. The actual structures depend critically on the nature of the donor. Thus, diethyl ether solvates tend to be mainly cubic tetramers (with some dimers) while THF favors mixtures of monomers and dimers. Tertiary vicinal diamines such as TMEDA and 1,2-di-Af-piperidinoethane, DPE, favor bidentated coordinated dimers. Finally, in the presence of triamines such as pentamethyl-triethylenediamine PMDTA and l,4,7-trimethyl-l,4,7-triazacyclononane TMTAN, many organolithium compounds form tridentately complexed monomers. 

We have shown how organolithium compounds adopt a variety of structures which differ in state of aggregation and degree of solvation. These species interconvert rapidly at equilibrium by different mechanisms, such as intermolecular C—Li exchange ligand transfer and dissociation-recombination processes as well as first-order reorganizations such as inversion and rotation. Dynamics of many of these processes have been determined by our methods of NMR line shape analysis. 

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