Organosilanes reactions with carbonyl compounds

Reduction to Alcohols. The organosilane-mediated reduction of ketones to secondary alcohols has been shown to occur under a wide variety of conditions. Only those reactions that are of high yield and of a more practical nature are mentioned here. As with aldehydes, ketones do not normally react spontaneously with organosilicon hydrides to form alcohols. The exceptional behavior of some organocobalt cluster complex carbonyl compounds was noted previously. Introduction of acids or other electrophilic species that are capable of coordination with the carbonyl oxygen enables reduction to occur by transfer of silyl hydride to the polarized carbonyl carbon (Eq. 2). This permits facile, chemoselective reduction of many ketones to alcohols. 

Acetals prepared from chiral diols and carbonyl compounds serve as a chiral synthetic equivalent of aldehydes or ketones. 1,3-Dioxanes synthesized from chiral 2,4-pentanediols are especially useful, and high asymmetric inductions are observed in the Lewis acid promoted reactions of a variety of organometallic compounds. After the removal of the chiral auxiliary by the oxidation and -elimination procedures, optically active alcohols are obtained. Optically active propargylic alcohols and cyanohydrins are synthesized from organosilane compounds, TMS-C CR or TMS-CN in the presence of TiCU (Scheme 24). 1 6-138 Reactive wganometals such as alkyl-lithiums, -magnesiums or -coppers also react with chiral... 

Topics reviewed during the year include the photochemistry of indoles, sulfoxides, pyrazoles and isothiazoles, (S-hetero)cyclic unsaturated carbonyl compounds, photoinduced single electron transfer (SET) reactions of amines and of azo compounds, SET reactions of organosilanes and organostannanes with Qo and ketones, photochromic polypeptides and di(hetero)arylethenes, processes in chromophore sequences on a-helical polypeptides,aryl-aryl coupling in furans, thiophenes and pyrroles," [3+2]cycloaddition of aromatic nitriles (and esters) with alkenes, and reactions of benzylsilane derivatives. ... 

DFT calculations combined with a distortion/interaction energy analysis showed that the anomalous Z selectivity observed in Wittig reactions of ( rt/j< -substituted benzalde-hydes is not caused by phosphoms-heteroatom interactions in the addition TS but is predominantly steric in nature. An efficient synthesis of olefins by the coupling of stabilized, semi-stabilized, and non-stabilized phosphorus ylides with various carbonyl compounds in the presence of silver carbonate has been reported. The first catalytic (in phosphane) Wittig reaction has been developed by utilizing an organosilane that chemoselectively reduces a phosphane oxide pre-catalyst to a phosphane. Sodium carbonate and A,A-diisopropyl-ethylamine have been employed as bases. The kinetic E/Z... 

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