Sulfoxides, allyl aryl

In 1950, Cope and coworkers48 unsuccessfully attempted to use the well-known Meisenheimer rearrangement of N-allylamine oxides to 0-allylhydroxylamines49 in performing the formally analogous rearrangements of allyl aryl sulfoxides to allyl arenesulfenates and of allyl aryl sulfones to allyl arenesulfinates (equations 11-13). 

Similar to the well-known thio-Claisen rearrangement of allyl aryl sulfides211 and sulfonium salts212, the thio-Claisen rearrangement of allyl aryl sulfoxides has also been reported213. For example, heating of allyl 2-naphthyl sulfoxide (147) at 120 °C for 2h in dimethylformamide resulted in quantitative isomerization to the dihydronaphthothio-... 

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 rearrangement of allylic sulfoxides to allylic sulfenates was first studied in connection with the mechanism of racemization of allyl aryl sulfoxides.272 Although the allyl sulfoxide structure is strongly favored at equilibrium, rearrangement through the achiral allyl sulfenate provides a low-energy pathway for racemization. 

Chiral vinyl sulfoxides have been coupled to aryl iodides to give a chiral allylic aryl compounds (C=C-CH2—Ar), in a three-step procedure with good enantio-selectivity. ... 

By photolyzing a solution of the allyl aryl sulfoxide at slightly elevated temperature at appropriate wavelengths, allyloxy radicals were produced from photolysis of the steady state concentration of the sulfenate. Another study examined the regioselectivity of addition of the alkyl and sulfenyl radicals across olefins and allenes [155], Control of these elements allowed potentially useful synthetic transformations to be designed [156], particularly as the sulfenate may be viewed as an O-H abstraction synthon . 

The reaction of the anion of an aryl allyl sulfoxide with benzaldehyde can take place via an a or y attack. The a attack leads to a product with three stercogcnic centers (four possible diastereomers) whereas the y attack results in a product which has only two stereogenie centers and geometric isomerism is possible. 

In contrast to the allylic sulfenates mentioned so far, cinnamyl trichloromethanesulfenate (9), prepared by the usual method, can be isolated and is relatively stable. Furthermore, its rearrangement to cinnamyl trichloromethyl sulfoxide (i.e., without allylic isomerization, equation 7), proceeds at a relatively slow rate (in CC14 at 80.0 °C, k = 3.90 x 10 5s 1). This result also contrasts with the observation mentioned earlier that cinnamyl arenesulfinate rearranges to a-phenylallyl aryl sulfone33,34. Similar behavior has been detected for y, y-dimethylallyl ester 11 which undergoes thermal isomerization to sulfoxide 12 (equation 8)36-38. 

In summary, the evidence described above demonstrates three main mechanistic features of the rearrangement of allylic sulfenates to sulfoxides (1) spontaneous and wholly concerted [2,3]-sigmatropic shift of allyl or a-substituted allyl esters (7 a, b) at one extreme (2) complete stability of the y-aryl and y,y-dialkyl substituted allyl sulfenates as well as... 

In order to account for the unusually facile thermal racemization of optically active allyl p-tolyl sulfoxide (15 R = p-Tol) whose rate of racemization is orders of magnitude faster than that of alkyl aryl or diaryl sulfoxides as a result of a comparably drastically reduced AH (22kcalmol- ), Mislow and coworkers44 suggested a cyclic (intramolecular) mechanism in which the chiral sulfoxide is in mobile equilibrium with the corresponding achiral sulfenate (equation 10). 

The thermal racemization of optically active aryl allyl sulfoxides ArS(0)CHjCH=CH2 is orders of magnitude faster, and has a much lower activation energy, than that of aryl alkyl sulfoxides ArS(0)R (Bickart et ai, 1968). The reason is that the presence of the allyl group permits the sulfoxide to equilibrate with the isomeric, achiral sulfenate ester by a concerted, cyclic process (89) for whichis only about 20 kcal moM.The rates of racemiz-... 

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