Sigma bond activation

Abstract Synthetically relevant advances in the area of carbon-carbon sigma bond activation have been made possible by 8-acylqumoline directing groups. Stable rhodium metallacycle intermediates have been shown to undergo a variety of transformations, including carboacylation reactions, to produce value-added products containing all-carbon quaternary centers. The kinetic profile of such reactions has been shown to be substrate dependent. 

Perrin L, Eisenstein O, Maron L. Chemoselectivity in [sigma] bond activation by lanthanocene complexes from a DFT perspective reactions of Cp2LnR (R = CH3, H, SiH3) with SiH4 and CH3-S1H3. Netv J Chem. 2007 31 549-555. 

Rhodacarborane catalysts have been immobilized by attachment to polystyrene beads with appreciable retention of catalytic activity (227). A 13-vertex /oj iJ-hydridorhodacarborane has also been synthesized and demonstrated to possess catalytic activity similar to that of the icosahedral species (228). Ak-oxidation of closo- >(2- P((Z [) 2 - i- > l[l-Bih(Z, results in a brilliant purple dimer. This compound contains two formal Rh " centers linked by a sigma bond and a pak of Rh—H—B bridge bonds. A number of similar dimer complexes have been characterized and the mechanism of dimer formation in these rhodacarborane clusters have been studied in detail (229). 

Gassman, P.G. Fentiman Jr., A.F. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1969, 91, 1545 1970, 92, 2549. For a discussion of the use of the tool of increasing electron demand to probe neighboring-group activity by double bonds, sigma bonds, and aryl rings, see Lambert, J.B. Mark,... 

Attempts to synthesize transition metal alkyl compounds have been continuous since 1952 when Herman and Nelson (1) reported the preparation of the compound C H6>Ti(OPri)3 in which the phenyl group was sigma bonded to the metal. This led to the synthesis by Piper and Wilkinson (2) of (jr-Cpd)2 Ti (CH3)2 in 1956 and a large number of compounds of titanium with a wide variety of ligands such as ir-Cpd, CO, pyridine, halogen, etc., all of which were inactive for polymerization. An important development was the synthesis of methyl titanium halides by Beerman and Bestian (3) and Ti(CH3)4 by Berthold and Groh (4). These compounds show weak activity for ethylene polymerization but are unstable at temperatures above — 70°C. At these temperatures polymerizations are difficult and irreproduceable and consequently the polymerization behavior of these compounds has been studied very little. In 1963 Wilke (5) described a new class of transition metal alkyl compounds—x-allyl complexes,... 

The results of polymerizing ethylene using varying sigma-bonded transition metal alkyl compounds are summarized in Table VII. It is evident that none of the catalysts are very active and are comparable with the simple allyl compounds listed in Table I. 

E) Sigma-bond metathesis. Dihydrogen is observed to react with transition-metal-alkyl bonds even when the metal lacks lone pairs. In this case the reaction cannot be explained in terms of the oxidative-addition or reductive-elimination motif. Instead, we can view this reaction as a special type of insertion reaction whereby the ctmr bond pair takes the donor role of the metal lone pair and donates into the cthh antibond. When the M—R bonds are highly polarized as M+R, the process could also be described as a concerted electrophilic H2 activation in which R acts as the base accepting H+. 

Flood, Thomas C., Stereochemistry of Reactions of Transition Metal-Carbon Sigma Bonds, 12, 37. Floss, Heinz G., Stereochemistry of Biological Reactions at Proprochiral Centers, 15, 253. Freedman, T. B., Stereochemical Aspects of Vibrational Optical Activity, 17, 113. 

The second common method of synthesising polymers (Fig. 5.3) is chain (addition) polymerisation. The most common type of addition polymer is based on ethene CH2 = CHj in which the monomer contains at least one double (tt) bond which on being activated, by free radical attack say, opens up to produce two single sigma bonds and the homopolymer poly(ethene). (Note in Fig. 5.3 the resultant polymer backbone is joined together by carbon-carbon bonds, unlike the condensation polymer systems (Fig. 5.1).)... 

Many reactions may be successfully utilized in the synthesis of compounds with sigma bonds between group IV3 metals and transition metals, but none is of general applicability. Moreover, the problem is complicated in the case of optically active compounds since ... 

A common motif in organometallic chemistry is the agostic interaction, which can act to stabilize low-coordination low-e-count complexes. The requirement is an alkyl group with a / - or a y-C—H bond attached to the metal within reach of (i.e., cis to) an empty coordination site. An attractive interaction occurs with the C—H bond acting as a 2e donor into the low-lying metal valence orbital that occupies that site. In the case of a / -C—H bond, hydride transfer may occur with little activation, resulting in an M—H sigma bond and complex with an alkene as discussed above. 

There are much fewer examples in the literature of the heterolytic cleavage of Si H bonds compared to H-H and even fewer other examples in which a cr-silane complex was observed as an intermediate in the activation. We have synthesized alkyl-substituted diimine ligands with sidearms containing labile functional groups that reserve a vacant site for binding and activation of sigma bonds as shown in Eq. (32) (108,109). 

O The active catalytic species results from the transfer of an ethyl group from an aluminum to form a sigma bond to a titanium species. Propylene forms a "pi complex with the titanium by interaction of its pi MOs with a vacant coordination site on the metal. 

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