Temperature tautomerism

Ethyl acetoacetate is a tautomeric substance which at room temperature exists as an equilibrium mixture of the keto and enol forms, the latter form being present to the extent of about 7%. 

The ketone is added to a large excess of a strong base at low temperature, usually LDA in THF at -78 °C. The more acidic and less sterically hindered proton is removed in a kineti-cally controlled reaction. The equilibrium with a thermodynamically more stable enolate (generally the one which is more stabilized by substituents) is only reached very slowly (H.O. House, 1977), and the kinetic enolates may be trapped and isolated as silyl enol ethers (J.K. Rasmussen, 1977 H.O. House, 1969). If, on the other hand, a weak acid is added to the solution, e.g. an excess of the non-ionized ketone or a non-nucleophilic alcohol such as cert-butanol, then the tautomeric enolate is preferentially formed (stabilized mostly by hyperconjugation effects). The rate of approach to equilibrium is particularly slow with lithium as the counterion and much faster with potassium or sodium. 

An interesting case are the a,/i-unsaturated ketones, which form carbanions, in which the negative charge is delocalized in a 5-centre-6-electron system. Alkylation, however, only occurs at the central, most nucleophilic position. This regioselectivity has been utilized by Woodward (R.B. Woodward, 1957 B.F. Mundy, 1972) in the synthesis of 4-dialkylated steroids. This reaction has been carried out at high temperature in a protic solvent. Therefore it yields the product, which is formed from the most stable anion (thermodynamic control). In conjugated enones a proton adjacent to the carbonyl group, however, is removed much faster than a y-proton. If the same alkylation, therefore, is carried out in an aprotic solvent, which does not catalyze tautomerizations, and if the temperature is kept low, the steroid is mono- or dimethylated at C-2 in comparable yield (L. Nedelec, 1974). 

The mean chemical shifts of A- unsubstituted pyrazoles have been used to determine the tautomeric equilibrium constant, but the method often leads to erroneous conclusions (76AHC(Sl)l) unless the equilibrium has been slowed down sufficiently to observe the signals of individual tautomers (Section 4.04.1.5.1). When acetone is used as solvent it is necessary to bear in mind the possibility (depending on the acidity of the pyrazole and the temperature) of observing the signals of the 1 1 adduct (55) whose formation is thermodynamically favoured by lowering the solution temperature (79MI40407). A similar phenomenon is observed when SO2 is used as solvent. 

A large programme utilizing temperature-jump relaxation methods for the study of tautomerism in aqueous solution has led the Dubois group to determine the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters of the equilibrium (130a) (130b) (78T2259). The tautomeric... 

An example of non-aromatic tautomerism has already been quoted (Table 13, Section 4.04.1.3.3(ii)) the equilibrium between the two enamines (152a) and (152b) is solvent and temperature dependent (70BSF3147). 

Fig. 1. Examples of temperature dependence of the rate constant for the reactions in which the low-temperature rate-constant limit has been observed 1. hydrogen transfer in the excited singlet state of the molecule represented by (6.16) 2. molecular reorientation in methane crystal 3. internal rotation of CHj group in radical (6.25) 4. inversion of radical (6.40) 5. hydrogen transfer in halved molecule (6.16) 6. isomerization of molecule (6.17) in excited triplet state 7. tautomerization in the ground state of 7-azoindole dimer (6.1) 8. polymerization of formaldehyde in reaction (6.44) 9. limiting stage (6.45) of (a) chain hydrobromination, (b) chlorination and (c) bromination of ethylene 10. isomerization of radical (6.18) 11. abstraction of H atom by methyl radical from methanol matrix [reaction (6.19)] 12. radical pair isomerization in dimethylglyoxime crystals [Toriyama et al. 1977].

In the genuine low-temperature chemical conversion, which implies the incoherent tunneling regime, the time dependence of the reactant and product concentrations is detected in one way or another. From these kinetic data the rate constant is inferred. An example of such a case is the important in biology tautomerization of free-base porphyrines (H2P) and phtalocyanins (H2PC), involving transfer of two hydrogen atoms between equivalent positions in the square formed by four N atoms inside a planar 16-member heterocycle (fig. 42). 

In 1949, by comparison of the ultraviolet spectra of 2- and 4-amino-pyridine with those of the alkylated forms of the alternative tautomers, Anderson and Seeger showed that the parent compounds existed predominantly in the amino form and reported that the tautomeric composition did not vary greatly with the temperature. By using the pK method, in 1952 Angyal and AngyaP showed that... 

The tautomeric structure leads to ambiguities in the nomenclature of compounds in this series. Thus, 5-methyl- and 6-methylbenzo-furoxan denote two different molecules which, because of their interconversion, cannot be isolated separately at normal temperatures. Throughout this review, when we intend to refer to the ambiguous mixture, we shall use the system employing the lowest numbers. The above methyl derivative, for example, will be described as 6-methyl-benzofuroxan regardless of the form adopted in the crystal. When a... 

It must be emphasized that all time-dependent chemical phenomena, such as tautomerism, are sensitive to temperature changes. In this section, we treat classic DNMR (dynamic NMR) studies and cases of changes in the NMR spectra with temperature together. In Table XI we have classified these studies according to the physical state of the sample and to the nuclei... 

Gas-phase studies where relevant tautomeric compounds are described are ihore scarce, but include uracil, thymine, and adenine [97CPL(269)39]. In the case of the 2-pyridone/hydroxypyridine equilibrium, the intensity of the OH and NH stretching vibrations was measured for eight temperatures in the range from 428 to 533 K in the gas phase. This allows determination otAH and AS for the equilibrium (92JPC1562). 

JA4105) (Section V,A) (2) that of 1,2,3-triazole and 3(5)-methylpyr-azole and the reason why they are liquid at room temperature (89JCC426) (Section V,D,2) and (3) the tautomerism of C-methyl-pyrazoles and -imidazoles (90JA1303) (Section which have already all been dis-... 

---