Carbenes sulphonyl

As carbenes react with arsine to give ylides, so nitrenes react to give arsinimines . The nitrenes were generated in situ by copper-catalysed decomposition either of azidesor 3-aryl-l,4,2-dioxazolidin-5-ones N-Ethoxycarbonyl- and iV-p-tolyl-sulphonyl-triphenylarsinimines have been prepared by nitrene capture reactions in which the nitrenes were generated by the action of base on, respectively, a sulphonyloxyurethane and a sulphonamide e.g. equation 44. 

Semi-empirical INDO calculations have been carried out on cycloheptatrienyli-dene, cycloheptatetraene, and related systems. The most stable structure for cyclo-heptatetraene was found to be non-planar with a C2 axis of symmetry, and should be more stable than the carbene form. Even though most of the chemistry of cyclo-heptatrienylidene is consistent with carbene behaviour, the allene and carbene forms may be in equilibrium, and the position of equilibrium solvent-dependent. In fact decomposition of the sodium salt of the toluene-p-sulphonyl-hydrazone (163) gives dimeric products formed from allene (164), and addition of cycloheptatrienylidene to tetracyclones gives products derived from the adduct (165). ... 

Nitrenes were first proposed as reactive intermediates in the Lossen rearrangement by Tiemann in 1891, and subsequently by Stieglitz (1896) to account for the mechanisms of the related Hofmann, Curtius, and Beckmann rearrangements. Apart from an extensive amount of work by Curtius on the thermal decomposition of aryl and sulphonyl azides, interest in nitrenes declined until the reemergence of carbene chemistry in the 1950s. Reviews on nitrene chemistry by Kirmse (1959), Horner (1963), and Abramovitch (1964) reflected this renewed interest in nitrenes and provided a stimulus for the immense research effort undertaken in the 1960s, which has been surveyed in many reviews and two books.Of particular note are two chapters by Abramovitch" describing all facets of nitrenes, and an excellent chapter devoted specifically to aryl- and hetarylnitrenes by P. A. S. Smith. The present chapter is intended to update these reviews and it is hoped that it will stimulate further work, particularly on the synthetic aspects of intermolecular arylnitrene reactions. 

C-Labelling showed that the thermal conversion of the phenyl trimethylsilyl diazo-compound (168) into (169) involved isomerization of a phenyl carbene into a cycloheptatrienylidene, silacyclopropanes were not involved. It was shown that the P-naphthyl carbene obtained by rearrangement of 4,5-benzocycloheptatrienylidene enters the singlet-triplet manifold as a singlet. Evidence has been reported that aryl carbenes can show both electrophilic and nucleophilic properties in their intramolecular ring expansion. Low-temperature photolysis of the sodium salt of the toluene-p-sulphonyl hydrazone (170) gave, by intramolecular carbene addition, the dibenzobicyclo[4,l,0]heptatriene (171) which was trapped by buta-l,3-diene. ... 

The synthesis of azidocyclopropanes has been accomplished with varying success via the nitrogen transfer reaction from toluene-p-sulphonyl azide to cyclopropylamine anions or by the addition of carbenes or carbenoids to vinyl azides. 

The extrusion of sulphur dioxide from a sulphene to give a carbene has been postulated previously, but never authenticated. Flash pyrolysis of a-(toluene-p-sulphonyl)phenyldiazomethane gave i7-tolyl phenyl ketone (15%) and 2-methylfluorene (5%). The former could arise from phenyl-p-tolylsulphene by loss of sulphur monoxide and the latter by loss of sulphur dioxide to give the carbene, which rearranges to the fluorene. Sulphene is postulated as an intermediate in the formation of carbonyl sulphide by the solid-state photolysis of dimethyl sulphone and by various other high-energy processes. 

There have been a number of reports on the photochemical reaction between diazo-compounds and sulphides to form either stable or transient ylides. lllger et al. reported the isolation of a series of ylides from the reaction of dimethyl sulphide with substituted diazomethanes, such substituents being carbonyl, sulphonyl, or phosphoryl groups. Ando et of. described the reaction of diazo dimethyhnalonate with a series of sulphides but found that the yields of ylides varied considerably, much more so than for the thermal reaction, with the nucleophilicity of the sulphide. For example, dimethyl sulphide afforded an 88% yield of ylide (6a) while diphenyl sulphide afforded a 12% yield of ylide (6b). Repetition of the reaction with dimethyl sulphide but in the presence of cyclohexene indicated that the sulphide was about six times as reactive as the olefin toward the photochemically generated carbene. These reactions aU were assumed to occur by conversion of the diazo-compound into a singlet carbene, which attacked sulphur. However, it was found that (6a) also could... 

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