Primary and secondary alkylzinc iodide

Primary and secondary alkylzinc iodides and benzylic zinc halides also undergo Ni-catalyzed reactions with various primary alkyl iodides and bromides.407-409 According to the procedure by Knochel and co-workers, the transformations with alkylzinc iodides, which are less reactive than the corresponding dialkylzincs, require the presence of two additives Bu4NI and 4-fluorostyrene (Scheme 155).407,408... 

An important development in cuprate acylation methodology that addresses several of the most objectionable properties of the reagents themselves has come from Knochel and his associates.New highly functionaliz copper reagents, represented by the formula RCu(CN)ZnI, can be prepared from readily available primary and secondary alkylzinc iodides by transmetallation with the soluble complex CuCN-2LiX in THF (equation 65). 

Primary and secondary alkylzinc iodides (RZnI) are best prepared by direct insertion of zinc metal (zinc dust activated by 1,2-dibromoethane or chlorotrimethylsilane) into alkyl iodides or by treating alkyl iodides with Rieke zinc. The zinc insertion shows a remarkable functional group tolerance, permitting the preparation of polyfunctional... 

Charette et al. converted both primary and secondary alkyl iodides to the corresponding alkylzinc iodides, using either ethylzinc iodide or isopropylzinc iodide.34 The reactions, for example, Scheme 30, which were performed in UV-irradiated (X > 280 nm) chloroform solutions, gave conversions as high as 88% in less than 4h. 

Negishi-type cross-coupling reactions of primary and secondary alkyl iodides 1 and alkylzinc bromides 2 proceeded with 10 mol% of Ni(py)4Cl2/(sBu)-PyBOX 5a (entry 6) [48]. Based on calculations, an alkylNi(I)(PyBOX) complex is formed by initial SET reduction, which carries much of the spin density in the ligand, similar to Vicic s catalysts 9. Based on this result a Ni(I)-Ni(II)-Ni(III) catalytic cycle was proposed to operate. 

An alternative protocol for treating alkylzinc bromides with primary and secondary alkyl bromides and iodides was described by Zhou and Fu.409 In the study, a combination of Ni(cod)2 and a chiral oxazoline ligand 306 was used as a catalytic system providing 62-88% yield of product 307 A,A-dimethylacetamide (DMA) was the reaction solvent (Scheme 156). 

The alkylzinc halides formed in this reaction are white crystalline compounds which are rarely isolated and which decompose to the dialkyl compounds when heated. Good results are obtained on use of primary or secondary alkyl iodides (sometimes mixed with the bromides). The reaction is carried out in an atmosphere of nitrogen or carbon dioxide. 

The direct reaction shown in eq. (5.1) is similar to the reaction which is applied for organosilicon compounds and organotin compounds in industrial preparations. The alkylzinc halides obtained give dialkylzinc by distillation with heating as shown in eq. (5.2) [12]. Usually primary and secondary iodides and a mixture of bromides and iodides are used for the direct reactions. 

All of the alkyl electrophiles shown in Schemes 73-78 are primary alkyl derivatives. On the other hand, cross-coupling of primary alkylzincs with secondary alkyl iodides and bromides was shown to be feasible with 4% Ni(COD)2, 8% s-Bu-Pybox (3) and DMA(N,N-Dimethylacetamide)88k (Scheme 79). More recently, a modification of this procedure through the use of -Pr-Pybox and 7 1 DMI/THF, where DMI is 1,3-dimethyl-2-imidazolidinone, in place of v-Bu-Pybox (3) and DMA has been shown to permit enantioselective alkylation of racemic secondary a-bromoamides with organozincs210 (Scheme 79). 

This has led to the discovery of electron-deficient styrenes, such as those shown in Figure 2. As detailed later, these ligands have been shown to be effective for the Ni-catalyzed alkylation of organozincs with primary alkyl iodides and bromides91. More recently, Fu88k has reported that a catalyst consisting of Ni(COD)2 and s-Bu-Pybox (3) is satisfactory even for the reaction of primary alkylzincs with secondary alkyl bromides... 

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