Rhodium complexes reactivity

The new family of phospholes with 2,4,6-trialkylphenyl substituent on the phosphorus atom show, in many respects, a special reactivity. Due to the flattening of the P-pyramid, the arylphospholes exhibit aromaticity and hence underwent Friedel-Crafts reactions. The regioselective functionalization through reaction with phosphorus tribromide gave a variety of phospholes with an exocyclic P-moiety. Novel phosphole platinum and rhodium complexes were prepared and a part of them was tested in hydroformylation reactions. 

Rhodium compounds have also been used as catalysts since the late 1960s and mechanistic studies date from the 1970s.534,578-582 The binuclear rhodium complex [(Ph3P)4Rh2(//-OH)2] was found to be an effective catalyst for the reductive carbonylation of nitrobenzenes to carbamate esters. Electron-withdrawing groups at the para-position enhance the reactivity of the substrate.583... 

Catalyst Reactivation Using Propargyl Acetate. The Wiped-Film Evaporator/02 reactivation procedure and the Capture of Active Catalyst Using Solid Acidic Support with FI2 Elution procedure (see above) both involve the separation of uncomplexed phosphine from rhodium complex. Since the value of the uncomplexed phosphine is significant, technology that does not require separation of phosphine during catalyst reactivation is desirable. 

It was found that, in a nonpolar medium, the crotyl rhodium complex 1 is relatively inactive as a codimerization catalyst. However, it becomes very active in the presence of a small amount of donors such as alcohol. The activity generally increases linearly with the amount of the added donors and then depends on the strength of the donors, either leveling off or decreasing with further increases in the donor concentration. Strong donors improve the activity at lower concentration but inhibit the reaction at higher concentration. Some representative donors and their rate enhancement efficiency are shown in Table VI. The relationships between the concentrations of various donors and the reaction rates are summarized in Figure 5. The rate enhancement efficiency (expressed as relative reactivity) of a donor was measured based on the maximum rate attainable by addition of a suitable quantity of the donor to the reaction mixture, i.e., the maximum in the activity curve of Fig. 5. The results in Table VI show that those donors with p Ka values (25) between -5 and... 

Rhodium complexes catalyze 1,2-addition of main group metal compounds to aldimines as well. Table 5 summarizes the reported methods. Electron-withdrawing substituents such as sulfonyl and acyl groups on the imino nitrogen atom are important to obtain sufficiently high reactivity. Asymmetric synthesis (diastereoselective and enantioselective) has also been accomplished. 

Efforts to tune the reactivity of rhodium catalysts by altering structure, solvent, and other factors have been pursued.49,493 50 Although there is (justifiably) much attention given to catalysts which provide /raor-addition processes, it is probably underappreciated that appropriate rhodium complexes, especially cationic phosphine complexes, can be very good and reliable catalysts for the formation of ( )-/3-silane products from a air-addition process. The possibilities and range of substrate tolerance are demonstrated by the two examples in Scheme 9. A very bulky tertiary propargylic alcohol as well as a simple linear alkyne provide excellent access to the CE)-/3-vinylsilane products.4 a 1 In order to achieve clean air-addition, cationic complexes have provided consistent results, since vinylmetal isomerization becomes less competitive for a cationic intermediate. Thus, halide-free systems with... 

Ligand 73 was prepared directly from a single enantiomer of the corresponding naphthol of QUINAP 60, an early intermediate in the original synthesis, and both enantiomers of BINOL. Application in hydroboration found that, in practice, only one of the cationic rhodium complexes of the diastereomeric pair proved effective, (aA, A)-73. While (aA, A)-73 gave 68% ee for the hydroboration of styrene (70% yield), the diastereomer (aA, R)-73 afforded the product alcohol after oxidation with an attenuated 2% ee (55% yield) and the same trend was apparent in the hydroboration of electron-poor vinylarenes. Indeed, even with (aA, A)-73, the asymmetries induced were very modest (31-51% ee). The hydroboration pre-catalyst was examined in the presence of catecholborane 1 at low temperatures and binuclear reactive intermediates were identified. However, when similar experiments were conducted with QUINAP 60, no intermediates of the same structural type were found.100... 

Cationic rhodium complexes of these ligands were prepared and applied in the enantioselective hydroboration-oxidation of a range of vinylarenes,106,107 carefully chosen to highlight the effect on reactivity and enantioselectivity of different aryl substituents and / -substitution. Like QUINAP 60 and PHENAP 65, the ( -ligand gave rise to the (A)-secondary alcohol. 

The enhanced synthetic potential of rhodium-complex-catalyzed enantioselective hydrogenation provided by these advances in ligand design has led to renewed interest in the reaction mechanism, and here we highlight four recent topics (i) the extended base of reactive intermediates (ii) an improved quadrant model for ligand-substrate interactions (iii) computational approaches to mechanism and (iv) (bis)-monophosphine rhodium complexes in enantioselective hydrogenation. These are discussed in turn. 

Steric effects were also found to be important for determining the reactivity of rhodium complexes containing N-heterocyclic carbene (NF1C) ligands [47] (Scheme 10), which have been the subject of intense in-... 

This complex easily looses CO, which enables co-ordination of a molecule of alkene. As a result the complexes with bulky phosphite ligands are very reactive towards otherwise unreactive substrates such as internal or 2,2-dialkyl 1-alkenes. The rate of reaction reaches the same values as those found with the triphenylphosphine catalysts for monosubstituted 1-alkenes, i.e. up to 15,000 mol of product per mol of rhodium complex per hour at 90 °C and 10-30 bar. When 1-alkenes are subjected to hydroformylation with these monodentate bulky phosphite catalysts an extremely rapid hydroformylation takes place with turnover frequencies up to 170,000 mole of product per mol of rhodium per hour [65], A moderate linearity of 65% can be achieved. Due to the very fast consumption of CO the mass transport of CO can become rate determining and thus hydroformylation slows down or stops. The low CO concentration also results in highly unsaturated rhodium complexes giving a rapid isomerisation of terminal to internal alkenes. In the extreme situation this means that it makes no difference whether we start from terminal or internal alkenes. 

In the example shown in Figure 4.4 either of these mechanisms leads to insertion of the alkyne into the C-Rh double bond of the initially formed acylcarbene rhodium complex. The resulting vinylcarbene complex undergoes intramolecular cyclopropanation of the 1-cyclohexenyl group to yield a highly reactive cyclopropene, which is trapped by diphenylisobenzofuran. 

A novel route was examined for the synthesis of the u,y9-unsaturated amide 59 vio the intermolecular couphng of four components an alkyne, a hydrosilane, an amine, and CO (Eq. 11). All of these components are assembled in an ordered manner with the assistance of a rhodium complex. The use of pyrrolidine as the nucleophile gave the optimum results, whereas alcohols were not reactive nucleophiles under similar reaction conditions [19 ej. 

It was apparent from the beginning (Scheme 16.7) that there were four potentially independent aspects of reactivity 1) the rate of bimolecular transfer of the diazo ester to the rhodium-complex [10a, 22] 2) the ratio [21] of C-H insertion to /9-H elimination [(34-1-35 -h 36 -h 37)/33] 3) the chemoselectivity [(34-i-35)/(36-i-37)] [4] and 4) the diastereoselectivity [9] of the insertion (34/35 or 36/37). As a prelude to the development of an effectively chiral catalyst, we felt that it was important to experimentally explore these aspects of reactivity. 

Even though the outlined approach allowed the successful rationalisation of many experimentally observed shift/structure and shift/reactivity correlations, Leitner et al. have pointed out that such relations cannot be expected to be universally valid and require that structural variations are modest and avoid large simultaneous changes in parameters that may have opposite effects on metal chemical shifts.61 To overcome these drawbacks and establish a more rational interpretation of chemical shift trends, they used a combination of experimental and computational efforts to assess the importance of different electronic and structural factors on the metal chemical shifts of a series of rhodium complexes with bidentate chelating bisphosphine ligands. The basis of their approach is first the validation of experimentally observed metal shifts by... 

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