Organometallic compounds with amides

For a list of preparations of ketones by the reaction of organometallic compounds with carboxylic esters, salts, anhydyrides, or amides, with references, see Ref. 568, pp. 685, 693. 

Interest in the uses of HMPT has also been maintained, but a warning has been issued (by the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company and the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) about its potential acute toxicity. HMPT has been used in the synthesis of 2,4-bis(dimethylamino)qui nolines,9 8 as a solvent for reactions between carbonyl compounds and sulphur," for the conversion of iV-benzylcarbox-amides into 3-phenylpropionitriles,100 in reactions between metals or organometallic compounds with a variety of organic substrates,101 and as a solvent for alkylation reactions of /J-keto-esters and related compounds in which the alkylation reaction is accompanied by de(alkoxycarbonylation) (Scheme 7).102... 

Fig. 6.50. Acylation of organometallic compounds with various Weinreb amides (A, D and E) of carbonic acid.

We have already encountered one type of organometallic compound with a negative charge on carbon sodium acetylides, covered in Section 9-7. Terminal alkynes are weakly acidic, and they are converted to sodium acetylides by treatment with an unusually strong base, sodium amide. These sodium acetylides are useful nucleophiles, reacting with alkyl halides and carbonyl compounds to form new carbon-carbon bonds. 

Fig. 12. Reaction of organometallic compounds with nucleophilic sites (H-Nu) of the microbial cell. In this way organometallic compounds interfere with a large number of cell processes. For example, the reaction with essential thiol groups leads to the inhibition of enzymes. However, amines, amides, amino acids and sulphur-free proteins are nucleophilic reaction partners for organometallic compounds, too the corresponding reactions cause disturbances of many kinds in the metabolism of the microbe cell.

The first organometallic compounds we encountered were compounds of the type RC=CNa obtained by treatment of terminal alkynes with sodium amide m liquid ammo nia (Section 9 6)... 

The new silazane 5 may be reacted with activated metals, organometallic compounds or simple metal amides, or may first be transformed to its lithium salt and then reacted with metal(II) chlorides [11]. In all these cases, metal derivatives of 5 are obtained with the general formula j [Mc (/BuO)Si 9N(9M, which have no further base coordinated to the metal. So far we have synthesized amides with M = Ca, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Sr, Ba, all elements in oxidation state +2. X-ray structure determinations have been performed on the calcium, manganese, iron, zinc, and barium derivatives. 

Strong bases such as alkali metals, metal hydrides, metal amides, metal alkoxides, and organometallic compounds initiate the polymerization of a lactam by forming the lactam anion XXXIV [Hashimoto, 2000 Sebenda, 1989 Sekiguchi, 1984], for example, for e-caprolactam with a metal... 

Heterocycles treated in this section belong to several structure types. The metal atoms in compounds under discussion can exist not only in the tetravalent but also in the carbenoid divalent state and the heterocycles differ not only in the nature and number of metal atoms but also in the nature of ring bonds of the latter. Thus, besides conventional organometallic compounds having only M—C bonds there are heterocycles with M—M bonds and those with C—M—X or X—M—Y fragments (X and Y—common heteroatoms like O, S, N). The last type is the most numerous and important group of five-membered Ge-, Sn- and Pb-heterocycles in which the metals are involved in M—X and M— Y bonds similar to those in respective metal alkoxides, thiolates and amides. This feature not only affects the structural parameters of these compounds but determines their chemical properties, synthetic routes and applications. 

Fig. 6.44. Chemoselective acylation of an organometallic compound C with the Weinreb amide D of Figure 6.21 a general approach to ketones.

As most organometallic compounds, lithium enolates are highly polar entities susceptible to combine in various types of (eventually solvated) aggregates that undergo dynamic equilibria in solution. This phenomenon explains why enolate solutions are difficult to describe by the classical spectroscopic, physicochemical or theoretical methods, a difficulty enhanced by the sensitivity of these equilibria to many physicochemical factors such as the concentration, the temperature or the presence of complexing additives (lithium halides, amides, amines, HMPA,. ..). The problems due to dynamics are avoided in the solid state where many clusters of lithium enolates, alone or co-crystallized with exogenous partners, have been identified by X-ray crystallography. 

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