Other Commercially Available Nucleophiles

Common Nucleophiles (Commercially Available or Readily Prepared) 

NO N3 nitrite, azide NaN02, NaNs (useful for amine synthesis) 

When an atom center is complexed with a metal, that atom will have some characteristics of an anion and can often behave as a nucleophile. An organo-metallic Grignard reagent (RMgBr) is an example of such a nucleophile that often behaves as if it were a carbanion. It is convenient to draw a Grignard reagent as a carbanion, but since it is not truly an ionic species, quotation marks are typically drawn around the carbanion when it is used in a mechanism ( Rr ). This same convention is sometimes used for the nucleophilic hydride species ( Hr ) that is available when using lithium aluminum hydride (LiAlHt). 

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We see from these examples that many of the carbon nucleophiles we encountered in Chapter 10 are also nucleophiles toward aldehydes and ketones (cf. Reactions 10-104-10-108 and 10-110). As we saw in Chapter 10, the initial products in many of these cases can be converted by relatively simple procedures (hydrolysis, reduction, decarboxylation, etc.) to various other products. In the reaction with terminal acetylenes, sodium acetylides are the most common reagents (when they are used, the reaction is often called the Nef reaction), but lithium, magnesium, and other metallic acetylides have also been used. A particularly convenient reagent is lithium acetylide-ethylenediamine complex, a stable, free-flowing powder that is commercially available. Alternatively, the substrate may be treated with the alkyne itself in the presence of a base, so that the acetylide is generated in situ. This procedure is called the Favorskii reaction, not to be confused with the Favorskii rearrangement (18-7). ... 

In the present study the dimer (salen)CoAlX3 showed enhanced activity and enantioselectivity. The catalyst can be synthesized easily by readily commercially available precatalyst Co(salen) in both enantiomeric forms. Potentially, the catalyst may be used on an industrial scale and could be recycled. Currently we are looking for the applicability of the catalyst to asymmetric reaction of terminal and meso epoxides with other nucleophiles and related electrophile-nucleophile reactions. 

A wide variety of other heterocyclic ring systems can conceivably serve as the conjugated backbone in nonlinear organic molecules. We will give examples from preliminary work on two of these, the thiazole and pyrimidine heterocycle derivatives 65-72 in Table VIII. These two heterocycles were chosen because the appropriate haloderivatives are commercially available as starting materials for nucleophilic aromatic substitution. The pyrimidine derivatives are of particular interest since their absorption edges ( 400 nm) are shifted hypsochromically an additional 30 nm relative even to the pyridines. 

Polysulfones exhibit excellent thermal oxidative resistance, and resistance to hydrolysis and other industrial solvents, and creep. The initial commercial polysulfones were synthesized by the nucleophilic replacement of the chloride on bis(p-chlorophenyl) sulfone by the anhydrous sodium salt of bisphenol A. It became commercially available in 1966 under the trade name Udel. It exhibits a reasonably high Tg of 190°C. 

Polyetherimides (PEI) are polyimides containing sufficient ether as well as other flexibi-lizing structural units to impart melt processability by conventional techniques, such as injection molding and extrusion. The commercially available PEI (trade name Ultem) is the polymer synthesized by nucleophilic aromatic substitution between 1,3-bis(4-nitrophthalimido) benzene and the disodium salt of bisphenol A (Eq. 2-209) [Clagett, 1986]. This is the same reaction as that used to synthesize polyethersulfones and polyetherketones (Eq. 2-206) except that nitrite ion is displaced instead of halide. Polymerization is carried out at 80-130°C in a polar solvent (NMP, DMAC). It is also possible to synthesize the same polymer by using the diamine-dianhydride reaction. Everything being equal (cost and availability of pure reactants), the nucleophilic substitution reaction is probably the preferred route due to the more moderate reaction conditions. 

Many such activated acyl derivatives have been developed, and the field has been reviewed [7-9]. The most commonly used irreversible acyl donors are various types of vinyl esters. During the acylation of the enzyme, vinyl alcohols are liberated, which rapidly tautomerize to non-nucleophilic carbonyl compounds (Scheme 4.5). The acyl-enzyme then reacts with the racemic nucleophile (e.g., an alcohol or amine). Many vinyl esters and isopropenyl acetate are commercially available, and others can be made from vinyl and isopropenyl acetate by Lewis acid- or palladium-catalyzed reactions with acids [10-12] or from transition metal-catalyzed additions to acetylenes [13-15]. If ethoxyacetylene is used in such reactions, R1 in the resulting acyl donor will be OEt (Scheme 4.5), and hence the end product from the acyl donor leaving group will be the innocuous ethyl acetate [16]. Other frequently used acylation agents that act as more or less irreversible acyl donors are the easily prepared 2,2,2-trifluoro- and 2,2,2-trichloro-ethyl esters [17-23]. Less frequently used are oxime esters and cyanomethyl ester [7]. S-ethyl thioesters such as the thiooctanoate has also been used, and here the ethanethiol formed is allowed to evaporate to displace the equilibrium [24, 25]. Some anhydrides can also serve as irreversible acyl donors. 

Preliminary experiments using P-amino acids as SwAr nucleophiles showed that they either completely failed to react or afforded product mixtures, due to their poor solubility in nonaqueous solvents. P-Amino acid esters, on the other hand, are readily soluble in DMF, but only a few are commercially available. In this section, two different approaches are described that have successfully circumvented these problems. The key features are (i) a novel aqueous solvent system allowing the use of free a- and... 

This procedure was improved 123 for the synthesis of building units based on amino acids other than Gly, but with nonfunctionalized side chains (Table 6). To suppress the 3-elim-ination and racemization side reactions, triflates of a-hydroxycarboxylic acid esters 124 34 (L = OTf, Scheme 19) were used as substrates for the nucleophilic substitution. In order to prevent polyalkylation, the nucleophilic amine of to-BocNH- or co-tBu02C-alkylamines 33 were temporarily protected with the benzyl group. 115116 This protection also improved the yields and purity of Gly-based building units. In this case commercially available benzyl bromoacetate 34 (L=Br) was used as the substrate. In both cases the nucleophilic sub-... 

Carboxylic acids can also be activated by converting them to their anhydrides. For this purpose they are dehydrated with concentrated sulfuric acid, phosphorus pentoxide, or 0.5 equivalents of SOCl2 (1 equivalent of SOCl2 reacts with carboxylic acids to form acid chlorides rather than anhydrides). However, carboxylic anhydrides cannot transfer more than 50% of the original carboxylic acid to a nucleophile. The other 50% is released—depending on the pH value—either as the carboxylic acid or as a carboxylate ion and is therefore lost. Consequently, in laboratory chemistry, the conversion of carboxylic acids into anhydrides is not as relevant as carboxylic acid activation. Nonetheless, acetic anhydride is an important acetylat-ing agent because it is commercially available and inexpensive. 

Bulky ligands as above have also proved to be effective in other palladium-catalyzed reactions of aryl halides, e.g., amination [16-19], Suzuki-Miyaura reaction [20-22], Mizoroki-Heck reaction [23, 24], Migita-Kosugi-Stille reaction [25], and aryloxylation and alkoxylation [26-28] as well as the reaction with various carbon nucleophiles as described below. The ligands are considered to enhance both the initial oxidative addition of aryl halides and the reductive elimination of products [29, 30]. The effectiveness of the commercially available simple ligand, P(f-Bu)3, was first described for the amination by Nishiyama et al. [16]. 

Xanthates have been used most frequently because they offer the best combination in terms of reactivity, stability, and accessibility. Potassium 0-ethyl xanthate is commercially available and cheap. It is an excellent nucleophile and many xanthates can be made trivially by displacement of a suitable leaving group. The examples of radical additions displayed in Scheme 3 are representative and underscore many of the desirable features discussed above. As can be seen, the xanthate reagent is readily made from the hemiacetal of trifluoroacetaldehyde and adds efficiently to a large assortment of olefins [7]. 1,2-Dichloroethane was used as the solvent but many other solvents can be used. Several related trifluoromethylated xanthates have been prepared and can be used to introduce a trifiuoromethyl group into a complex molecule or to prepare various fiuorinated starting materials [8-10]. 

A hydroxide nucleophile is needed to synthesize an alcohol, and salts such as NaOH and KOH are inexpensive and commercially available. An alkoxide salt is needed to make an ether. Simple alkoxides such as sodium methoxide (NaOCH3) can be purchased, but others are prepared from alcohols by a Brpnsted-Lowry acid-base reaction. For example, sodium ethoxide (NaOCH2CH3) is prepared by treating ethanol with NaH. 

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