Ring strain ketones

This is a very strained ketone but three-membered ring formation is kineticalJy favourable and the hindered base offers no cleavage reactions. Notice that the rings are added in order of size. 

Scheme 1.8 shows some intramolecular enolate alkylations. The reactions in Section A involve alkylation of ketone enolates. Entry 1 is a case of a-alkylation of a conjugated dienolate. In this case, the a-alkylation is also favored by ring strain effects because y-alkylation would lead to a four-membered ring. The intramolecular alkylation in Entry 2 was used in the synthesis of the terpene seychellene. 

Cyclobutanones were found to be much more reactive under these conditions, presumably due to relief of ring strain (131). Racemic cyclobutanone (192) is oxidized under the conditions described above to provide lactones 193 and 194 in a ratio of 55 45, Eq. 111. The expected lactone product 193 is formed in 67% ee while the abnormal product 194 is formed in 92% ee. The major enantiomers of the two products are complementary, resulting from enantiomeric ketones. 

The photochemistry of cyclobutanone presents a special case since the Norrish type-I cleavage to give an acylalkyl diradical intermediate releases ring-strain energy. Thus the energy available for subsequent reactions is reduced correspondingly, compared to the energy retained in an acyl radical from an acychc ketone, or less strained cyclic ketones. 

Dioxiranes are three-membered cyclic ring peroxides that are expected to be very unstable owing to ring strain. They are effective oxygenating agents for epoxidations of olefins, allenes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, enols. and a, /i-unsaturated ketones for insertions of oxygen into X—H... 

The enol ether double bond is epoxidized by the peracid. Relief of the epoxide ring strain drives the rearrangement with migration of the silyl group to give the silylated a-hydroxy ketone product. 

Lactones and Lactams Unstrained lactones (cyclic esters) and lactams (cyclic amides) absorb at typical frequencies for esters and amides. Ring strain raises the carbonyl absorption frequency, however. Recall that cyclic ketones with five-membered or smaller rings show a similar increase in carbonyl stretching frequency (Section 18-5A). Figure 21-5 shows the effect of ring strain on the C=0 stretching frequencies of lactones and lactams. 

---