Oxygen nucleophiles, addition regioselectivity

One of the earliest uses of palladium(II) salts to activate alkenes towards additions with oxygen nucleophiles is the industrially important Wacker process, wherein ethylene is oxidized to acetaldehyde using a palladium(II) chloride catalyst system in aqueous solution under an oxygen atmosphere with cop-per(II) chloride as a co-oxidant.1,2 The key step in this process is nucleophilic addition of water to the palladium(II)-complexed ethylene. As expected from the regioselectivity of palladium(II)-assisted addition of nucleophiles to alkenes, simple terminal alkenes are efficiently converted to methyl ketones rather than aldehydes under Wacker conditions. 

In contrast, the addition of amines results in nucleophilic addition/elimination at the opposite a-position, resulting in substitution of the a-oxygen substituent, a reaction consistent with the Fischer carbene character embedded into this architecture (Equation 2) <2004JOM2000>. This regioselectivity difference almost certainly arises from the reversible nature of addition reactions using such weakly nucleophilic reagents. 

In the Au(I) catalysis of electron-poor alkynes such as 4, the catalytically active species is likely to be a cationic ligand-stabilized gold(I) Jt-complex, as in previously reported additions of oxygen nucleophiles to alkynes [5], Gold catalysts are very soft and thus carbophilic rather than oxophilic. On the basis of this assumption a plausible mechanism can be formulated as shown in Scheme 6. The cationic or strongly polarized neutral Au(I)-catalyst coordinates to the alkyne, and nucleophilic attack of the electron-rich arene from the opposite side leads to the formation of a vinyl-gold intermediate 7 which is stereospecifically protonated with final formation of the Z-olefm 8 [2, 4]. Regioselectivity is dominated by elec-... 

Liebeskind and coworkers have examined the reactivity of (2//-pyran)Mo(CO)2Cp+ cations 210, which may be prepared in optically active fonn from carbohydrate precursors. Nucleophilic attack on cation 210 occurs at the diene tenninus bonded to the ring oxygen to give jr-allyl complexes 51 (Scheme 53) . Hydride abstraction from 51 gives the cation 54 addition of a second nucleophilic occurs regioselectively to give... 

Reaction of Z-a./j-unsaturated iron-acyl complexes with bases under conditions similar to those above results in exclusive 1,4-addition, rather than deprotonation, to form the extended enolate species. However, it has been demonstrated that in the presence of the highly donating solvent hexamethylphosphoramide, y-deprotonation of the -complex 6 occurs. Subsequent reaction with electrophiles provides a-alkylated products such as 736 this procedure, demonstrated only in this case, in principle allows access to the a-alkylatcd products from both Z- and it-isomers of a,/j-unsaturated iron-acyl complexes. The hexamethylphosphoramide presumably coordinates to the base and thus prevents precoordination of the base to the acyl carbonyl oxygen, which has been suggested to direct the regioselective 1,4-addition of nucleophiles to -complexes as shown (see Section 1.1.1.3.4.1.2.). These results are also consistent with preference for the cisoid conformations depicted. 

The results in Table 3 were explained as shown in Scheme 4. From the fact that no kinetic isotope effect was observed in the reaction of phenyl-substituted disilenes with alcohols (Table 1), it is assumed that the addition reactions of alcohols to phenyltrimethyl-disilene proceed by an initial attack of the alcoholic oxygen on silicon (nucleophilic attack at silicon), followed by fast proton transfer via a four-membered transition state. As shown in Scheme 4, the regioselectivity is explained in terms of the four-membered intermediate, where stabilization of the incipient silyl anion by the phenyl group is the major factor favoring the formation of 26 over 27. It is well known that a silyl anion is stabilized by aryl group(s)443. Thus, the product 26 predominates over 27. However, it should be mentioned that steric effects also favor attack at the less hindered SiMe2 end of the disilene, thus leading to 26. 

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