Pyrroles electrophilic substitution, relative

Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution. The Tt-excessive character of the pyrrole ring makes the indole ring susceptible to electrophilic attack. The reactivity is greater at the 3-position than at the 2-position. This reactivity pattern is suggested both by electron density distributions calculated by molecular orbital methods and by the relative energies of the intermediates for electrophilic substitution, as represented by the protonated stmctures (7a) and (7b). Stmcture (7b) is more favorable than (7a) because it retains the ben2enoid character of the carbocycHc ring (12). 

It is also of significance that in the dilute gas phase, where the intrinsic orientating properties of pyrrole can be examined without the complication of variable phenomena such as solvation, ion-pairing and catalyst attendant on electrophilic substitution reactions in solution, preferential /3-attack on pyrrole occurs. In gas phase t-butylation, the relative order of reactivity at /3-carbon, a-carbon and nitrogen is 10.3 3.0 1.0 (81CC1177). 

The thiophene ring can be elaborated using standard electrophilic, nucleophilic, and organometallic chemistry. A variety of methods have been developed to exploit the tendency for the thiophene ring (analogous to that of furan and pyrrole) to favor electrophilic substitution and metallation at its a-carbons. Substitution at the p-carbons is more challenging, but this problem can also be solved by utilizing relative reactivity differences. 

Electrophilic substitution in furan, thiophene, selenophene and pyrrole has, up to 1970, been comprehensively reviewed by Marino.66 Italian workers have determined the relative reactivities of selenophene and thiophene as well67 relative rates are given in Table I. Including furan, the order of reactivity is furan > selenophene > thiophene. 

The fact that benzene derivatives are much more generally accessible than pyrroles has relegated pyrrole annelation to a relatively minor role in indole synthesis. Nevertheless the concept provides a viable synthetic approach and the existing methods serve as useful prototypes. One strategy is to build up an appropriately functionalized side-chain and complete indole formation by electrophilic substitution-aromatization. Reactions (135)-(137) illustrate this type of approach (79TL3477, 79JA257, 73JPR295). 

Thiophene is far more reactive than benzene in electrophilic substitution reactions. Reaction with bromine in acetic acid has been calculated to be 1.76 x 109 times faster than with benzene (72IJS(C)(7)6l). This comparison should, of course, be treated with circumspection in view of the fact that the experimental conditions are not really comparable. Benzene in the absence of catalysts is scarcely attacked by bromine in acetic acid. More pertinent is the reactivity sequence for this bromination among five-membered aromatic heterocycles, the relative rates being in the order 1 (thiophene) and 120 (furan) or, for trifluoroacetylation, 1 (thiophene), 140 (furan), 5.3 xlO7 (pyrrole) (B-72MI31300, 72IJS(C)(7)6l). Among the five-membered heteroaromatics, thiophene is definitely the least reactive. 

A DFT study of the reactivity of pyridine and the diazabenzenes towards electrophilic substitution, assuming frontier orbital control of the reactions, predicts their low reactivity as the HOMOs of these substrates are not n-orbitals.5 For pyridine-N-oxide, however, the HOMO is an aromatic orbital. DFT studies giving Fukui indices predict6 the preferred sites of electrophilic attack on pyrrole, furan, and thiophene and calculation of the local softness of the reactive sites rationalizes relative reactivities. 

The relative reactivities of all four unsubstituted rings have been subsequently determined in another electrophilic substitution trifluoroacetylation by trifluoroacetic anhydride in dichloroeth-ane.142 143 The relative rates, obtained by a competitive procedure, are in good agreement with the bromination data (Table V) and confirm, in particular, the big jump in reactivity from furan to pyrrole. The great reactivity of pyrrole cannot be ascribed to a reaction involving the anion C4H4N, since V-methylpyrrole is still more reactive than pyrrole by a factor of about 2. 

In pyrrole the a /3 reactivity ratio is much smaller than in the other 5-membered rings (see Section III,A, 2) here the formation of a relatively larger amount of 3-substituted isomer could be expected. Actually, the 5-substituted 2-alkyl derivative appears to be the main product in all the electrophilic substitutions of the 2-alkylpyrroles3 in some cases, as in the reactions with trifluoroacetic anhydride and acetyl trifluoroacetate,147 the 5-substituted isomer is apparently the only product formed. 

In many ways the chemistry of indole is that of a reactive pyrrole ring with a relatively unreactive benzene ring standing on one side—electrophilic substitution almost always occurs on the pyrrole ring, for example. But indole and pyrrole differ in one important respect. In indole, electrophilic substitution is preferred in the 3-position with almost all reagents. Halo-genation, nitration, snlfonation,... 

Pyrrole, Furait and Thiophen. Electrophilic substitution in these three heterocyclic rings takes place faster at the 2-position than at the 3-position. The standard explanation for attack at C-2 is based on the relative energies of the intermediates 4.51 and 4.52. They both have conjugated systems of four p orbitals, with the heteroatom at the end in 4.51 and inside in 4.52. It is not obvious why the former should be lower in energy than the... 

The data considered confirm the reactivity sequence pyrrole furan > selenophene > thiophene for substrate selectivity on electrophilic substitution (71 AHC(13)235) and show that the positional selectivity is reduced in the series furan > selenophene > thiophene > pyrrole, which correlate with that for the relative stability of the onium states of the elements (O < Se < S " < N" ") in agreement with the hypothesis proposed previously (79MI2,80KGS1587), not including selenophene and its derivatives. 

Structural changes affect seriously an electrophilic substitution orientation in pyrroles owing to their low positional selectivity in reactions with electrophiles. Thus, in contrast to thiophene, selenophene, and, especially, furan analogues, even a relatively weak type 11 substituent in position 2 of the pyrrole ring is capable of overcoming the a-oiienting effect of the heteroatom and directs an electrophile preferably to the position 4 (68JCS(B)392). N-(p-Nitrophenyl)pyrrole-2-carbaldehyde... 

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