Rearrangement process types

There are several reactions that are conceptually related to carbene reactions but do not involve carbene, or even carbenoid, intermediates. Usually, these are reactions in which the generation of a carbene is circumvented by a concerted rearrangement process. Important examples of this type are the thermal and photochemical reactions of a-diazo ketones. When a-diazo ketones are decomposed thermally or photochemically, they usually rearrange to ketenes, in a reaction known as the Wolff rearrangement.232... 

Scheme 5.22. Domino Wolff/Cope rearrangement/Norrish type I fragmentation/recombination process.

More than three decades ago, skeletal rearrangement processes using alkane or cycloalkane reactants were observed on platinum/charcoal catalysts (105) inasmuch as the charcoal support is inert, this can be taken as probably the first demonstration of the activity of metallic platinum as a catalyst for this type of reaction. At about the same time, similar types of catalytic conversions over chromium oxide catalysts were discovered (106, 107). Distinct from these reactions was the use of various types of acidic catalysts (including the well-known silica-alumina) for effecting skeletal reactions via carbonium ion mechanisms, and these led... 

Nevertheless, another possibility remained for the formation of insertion products, that they might be formed from the O-H insertion product, e.g., dichloromethyl benzyl ether 5, by the Wittig rearrangement of dichloromethoxy-carbanion 4, (Scheme 5, Eq. I).17 However, treatment of independently prepared benzyl dichloromethyl ether 5 with the same base solely gave benzyl chloride, but the insertion product was not obtained (Eq. 2). Hence, a Wittig-type rearrangement process was excluded. 

A phosphate-phosphonate rearrangement process has also been explored in which a strong base is used to abstract a proton from the position adjacent to an aryl phosphate ester linkage. The product, an or f/io-phosphonopheno I, is generated in excellent yield (Figure 6.16).70 Further exploration of the variability of structure for this type of reaction seems desirable. 

An interesting neophyl-type radical rearrangement process has been established for the synthesis of azabicycles, which are not readily accessible by other means. Barton McCombie deoxygenation of xanthate 70 under slow addition of (TMS)3SiH and AIBN in refluxing toluene furnished the 2-azabenzonorbor-nane derivative in good yield (Reaction 7.72) [82]. 

The electrophilic intermediate formed during the Beckmann rearrangement may be trapped by nucleophiles other than water. Strictly speaking, these reactions do not fit into the classical rearrangement reaction type. However, due to the fact that the carbon framework changes during the course of the reaction and to the similarities with the classical Beckmann rearrangement process, this topic will be analysed in the present chapter. 

Nitrilium ions are generally indicated as discrete intermediates in the Beckmann rearrangement of oximes (equation 37, Y = OH2) and in the Schmidt rearrangement (equation 37, Y = N2) of ketones and aldehydes with hydrogen azide. The first stage of these reactions has been defined as an ionization by rearrangement process through a transition state of type 183 (Smith, 1963). 

Methylpentanal. Early studies of propanal and 1-butanal in the gas phase have been reviewed by Cundall and Davies (61). Only a few other saturated aldehydes have been studied recently, and 3-methylpentanal is one of them. Rebbert and Ausloos (195) have compared the direct and the triplet-sensitized photolysis of 3-methylpentanal, since this molecule can undergo two kinds of intramolecular rearrangement process / Norrish type II process 18, a primary or a secondary a-hydrogen atom transfer to the carbonyl oxygen, giving 1-butene or trans/cis-2-butene, respectively. 

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