Organolithium reagents carbonyl compounds

Organolithium and organomagnesium reagents are highly reactive toward most carbonyl compounds. With aldehydes and ketones, the tetrahedral adduct is stable, and alcohols are isolated after protonation of the adduct, which is an alkoxide ion. 

Alkyltriphenylphosphonium halides are only weakly acidic, and a strong base must be used for deprotonation. Possibilities include organolithium reagents, the anion of dimethyl sulfoxide, and amide ion or substituted amide anions, such as LDA or NaHMDS. The ylides are not normally isolated, so the reaction is carried out either with the carbonyl compound present or with it added immediately after ylide formation. Ylides with nonpolar substituents, e.g., R = H, alkyl, aryl, are quite reactive toward both ketones and aldehydes. Ylides having an a-EWG substituent, such as alkoxycarbonyl or acyl, are less reactive and are called stabilized ylides. 

Organolithium compounds can add to a, (3-unsaturated ketones by either 1,2- or 1,4-addition. The most synthetically important version of the 1,4-addition involves organocopper intermediates, and is discussed in Chap 8. However, 1,4-addition is observed under some conditions even in the absence of copper catalysts. Highly reactive organolithium reagents usually react by 1,2-addition, but the addition of small amounts of HMPA has been found to favor 1,4-addition. This is attributed to solvation of the lithium ion, which attenuates its Lewis acid character toward the carbonyl oxygen.111... 

Organolithium reagents (Rli) react with carbonyl compounds in the same way as Grignard reagents. 

One of the important new directions in the study of addition reactions of organozinc compounds to aldehydes is the use of ionic liquids. Usually, application of these compounds in reactions with common organometallic reagents has a serious problem ionic solvents are usually reactive toward them, particularly Grignard and organolithium derivatives. It has been recently reported that carbonyl compounds react with allylzinc bromide formed in situ from allyl bromide and zinc in the ionic liquid 3-butyl-l-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, [bmim][BF4].285 Another important finding is that the more reactive ZnEt2 alkylates aldehydes in a number of ionic liquids at room temperature.286 The best yields (up to 96%) were obtained in A-butylpyridinium tetrafluoroborate, [bpy][BF4] (Scheme 107). 

Organolithium compounds are highly reactive and have been used in a variety of organic transformations. A major problem in the development of catalytic asymmetric conjugate additions of organolithium reagents to a,/3-unsaturated carbonyl compounds is that the high reactivity of RLi may cause both low chemoselectivity (1,2- vs. 1,4-addition) and low enantioselectivity. 

As emphasized above, the practical utility of organocerium compounds is to circumvent the problems which are faced with the corresponding Grignard and organolithium reagents because of their inability to react effectively with sterically demanding carbonyl compounds and carbon-heteroatom unsaturated bonds which have acidic a-protons. Some of the latest examples are shown below. 

The chemical behavior of heteroatom-substituted vinylcarbene complexes is similar to that of a,(3-unsaturated carbonyl compounds (Figure 2.17) [206]. It is possible to perform Michael additions [217,230], 1,4-addition of cuprates [151], additions of nucleophilic radicals [231], 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions [232,233], inter-[234-241] or intramolecular [220,242] Diels-Alder reactions, as well as Simmons-Smith- [243], sulfur ylide- [244] or diazomethane-mediated [151] cyclopropanati-ons of the vinylcarbene C-C double bond. The treatment of arylcarbene complexes with organolithium reagents ean lead via conjugate addition to substituted 1,4-cyclohexadien-6-ylidene complexes [245]. 

The most important application of organolithium reagents is their nucleophilic addition to carbonyl compounds. One of the simplest cases would be the reaction with the molecule CO itself, whose products are stable at room temperature. Recently, it was shown that a variety of RLi species are able to react with CO or f-BuNC in a newly developed liquid xenon (LXe) cell . LXe was used as reaction medium because it suppresses electron-transfer reactions, which are known to complicate the reaction . In this way the carbonyllithium and acyllithium compounds, as well as the corresponding isolobal isonitrile products, could be characterised by IR spectroscopy for the first time. 

The competition between insertion and hydrogen transfer is also crucial to the selectivity of the reaction of aluminium alkyls with carbonyl compounds. Aluminium alkyls, like organolithium compounds and Grignard reagents, can add to aldehydes and ketones to form secondary or tertiary alcohols, respectively. If the aluminium alkyl has a j -hydrogen, however, reduction of the carbonyl compound is a common side reaction, and can even become the main reaction [16]. Most authors seem to accept that reduction involves direct j5-hydrogen transfer to ketone. 

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