Sulfoxides, alkyl aryl carbanions

Reaction of the a-carbanion of an alkyl aryl sulfoxide (RCH2SOAr) with aldehydes may give four dia-stereomers. In general, the reaction is highly diastereoselective with respect to the a-sulEnyl carbon, but poorly diastereofacially selective with respect to attack on the carbonyl component. In fact, the a-carb-anion (31) of benzyl t-butyl sulfoxide adds to an aldehyde to produce only two diastereomers (32a) and (32b). As shown in Scheme 10, the selectivity increases when the counterion is A transition state structure (33) is proposed to account for the anti stereoselection. Addition of the dianion of (/ )-3-(p-to-lylsulfinyOptopionic acid (34) to aldehydes affords two main diasteieoisomeric 3 (p-tolylsulfinyl)-y-lac-tones (35 R = Ph and Bu. ca. 60 40). These isomers (35) were separated by chromatography, and their... 

In summary, lithium alkyl aryl sulfoxides can be efficiently used as equivalents of chiral a-hydroxy alkyl carbanion in the synthesis of 3-fiuoroalkyl 3-amino alcohols. On the other hand, fluorinated imines are versatile and readily available electrophilic sources of fluoroalkyl/fluoroaiyl amino groups. Excellent stereocontrol and reactivity can be achieved using aldimines A-protected with a PM group, which also makes fluorinated aldimines electronrich enough to be easy to handle. Furthermore, the PMP group can be cleaved readily and under mild conditions, thus representing the... 

Deprotonation of allylic aryl sulfoxides leads to allylic carbanions which react with aldehyde electrophiles at the carbon atom a and also y to sulfur . With benzaldehyde at — 10 °C y-alkylation predominates , whereas with aliphatic aldehydes at — 78 °C in the presence of HMPA a-alkylation predominates . When the a-alkylated products, which themselves are allylic sulfoxides, undergo 2,3-sigmatropic rearrangement, the rearranged compounds (i.e., allylic sulfenate esters) can be trapped with thiophiles to produce overall ( )-l,4-dihydroxyalkenes (equation 24). When a-substituted aldehydes are used as electrophiles, formation of syn-diols 27 occurs in 40-67% yields with diastereoselectivities ranging from 2-28 1 (equation 24) . ... 

The reactions between a-metalloalkyl sulfoxides and electrophiles have been extensively studied. Although alkylations of the sodium or potassium salts of dialkyl sulfoxides are not always very efficient since a,a -dialkylated sulfoxides are often produced (or stilbene in the case of methyl-sulfinyl carbanion and benzyl bromide ), those employing the lithioalkyl aryl sulfoxides work more efficiently with alkyl or allyl halides " and with epoxides. " " Typical examples of these alkylations, allylations and hydroxyalkylations (from epoxides) are illustrated in Scheme 86. 

According to this strategy, a-lithium alkyl sulfoxides I (Scheme 2) have been used as chiral a-hydroxyalkyl carbanion equivalents A, with fluorinated A-protected imines 2, synthetic equivalents of a-amino fluoroalkyl/aryl carbocations B (path 1), to give the target P-fluoroalkyl p-amino alcohols 3. This represents an unprecedented application of lithium alkyl sulfoxides in asymmetric synthesis, which have been... 

---