Reactivity organozinc reagents

Organozinc reagents aie not nearly as reactive towaid aldehydes and ketones as Grig-nai d reagents and organolithium compounds but are intermediates in certain reactions of alkyl halides. 

Ketones are less reactive than aldehydes toward organozinc reagents, and they are inherently less stereoselective because the differentiation is between two carbon substituents, rather than between a carbon substituent and hydrogen. Recently, a diol incorporating both franr-cyclohexanediamine and camphorsulfonic acid has proven effective in conjunction with titanium tetraisopropoxide.159... 

The presence of Cu(i) or Cu(n) salts in the aforementioned reactions is critical. It is believed that organozinc reagents undergo transmetallation with copper species to yield more reactive complexes.301 A proposed301 catalytic cycle (Scheme 118) suggests that the alkyl group transferred to the enone from the copper metal in a bimetallic intermediate 207. 

Crucially, this allows organozinc reagents to be prepared from less reactive aryl bromides and secondary or tertiary alkyl bromides. Alternatively, organozinc iodides can be prepared by means of a palladium(0)-catalyzed reaction between alkyl iodides and Et2Zn (Scheme 2.25) [53-56]. 

A prototypical study for this section has been obtained as early as in 1983 for carbonylative cross-coupling of the mixture of aryl iodide and alkyl iodide in the presence of Zn metal and palladium catalyst. This system apparently works due to differences of reactivity of aryl versus alkyl iodide toward metallation by Zn. Further studies were rather scarce to involve only preformed functionalized alkylzincs. Carbonylative cross-coupling of functionalized organozinc reagents with allylic esters and GO (1 atm) can be carried out in THF in the presence of HMPA, which suppresses side-reactions (Scheme 4). ... 

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