Terminal alkenes electrophilic oxidation

The reactivity order of alkenes is that expected for attack by an electrophilic reagent. Reactivity increases with the number of alkyl substituents.163 Terminal alkenes are relatively inert. The reaction has a low AHl and relative reactivity is dominated by entropic factors.164 Steric effects govern the direction of approach of the oxygen, so the hydroperoxy group is usually introduced on the less hindered face of the double bond. A key mechanistic issue in singlet oxygen oxidations is whether it is a concerted process or involves an intermediate formulated as a pcrcpoxide. Most of the available evidence points to the perepoxide mechanism.165... 

The second operation en route to tricycle 102, retrieval of the terminal alkene function first installed through the Bubnov reaction, commenced with a survey of electrophilic reagents that might plausibly cleave (oxidize) the propyl-tin bond within 119. The problem inherent in this... 

A reaction in the alternative sense 5.133 is the cycloaddition of a nitrile oxide to a terminal alkene, which gives mainly the diastereoisomer 5.141 by way of the transition structure 5.139. Nitrile oxide cycloadditions are among those dipolar cycloadditions which are electrophilic in nature. The substituent A is a hydrogen atom, and the medium-sized group is only a methyl group, so it fits the criteria that make this pathway plausible. 

Selenoxide elimination is now widely used for the synthesis of a,p-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, allyl alcohols and terminal alkenes since it proceeds under milder conditions than those required for sulfoxide or any of the other eliminations discussed in this chapter. The selenoxides are usually generated by oxidation of the parent selenide using hydrogen peroxide, sodium periodide, a peroxy acid or ozone, and are not usually isolated, the selenoxide fragmenting in situ. The other product of the elimination, the selenenic acid, needs to be removed from the reaction mixture as efficiently as possible. It can disproportionate with any remaining selenoxide to form the conesponding selenide and seleninic acid, or undergo electrophilic addition to the alkene to form a -hydroxy selenide, as shown in... 

The use of a class of pentafluorophenyl Pt(ll) complexes as catalysts allows the efficient epoxidation of simple terminal alkenes with environmentally benign hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant. Key features of this system are very high substrate selectivity, regioselectivity, and enantioselectivity, at least for this class of substrates. These properties are related to the soft Lewis acid character of the metal center that makes it relatively insensitive to water but, at the same time, capable of increasing the electrophilicity of the substrate by coordination. The reversal of the traditional electrophile/nucleophile roles in epoxidation helps explain the unprecedented reactivity observed. 

So far, catalyst design has aimed mainly at oxidant activation and little attention has been paid to the interaction between the metal center and the alkene. A requirement for a successful epoxidation system of wide scope for simple terminal alkenes would seem to be a new catalyst design focusing on activation of the substrate instead of the oxidant. This suggests noble metals as applicable catalytic centers, because of their affinity for terminal alkenes versus internal ones. This results in a change of role for the catalyst from electrophile to nucleophile in the system. 

When the use of nucleophiles other than water in the presence of terminal alkenes under Pd(II) catalysis Wacker-type products frequently predominate. Use of White s electrophilic ftts-sulfinyl Pd(ll) acetate catalyst with terminal alkenes in the presence of acetic acid enabled the preparation of terminal acetoxylated olefins via allylic C—H oxidation and subsequent regioselective nucleophilic trapping of a Pd 7i-allyl complex (Table 3.3). The substrates screened afforded the desired end products with high levels of fi-selectivity and in moderate yields with excellent linear branched ratios. Recent updates to this method include the use of A-tosylcarbamates as nucleophiles. ... 

Oxidative Heck reactions via Pd(II) C—H functionalization of terminal alkenes with pinacol boranes have been described for the preparation of styrenes and derivatives through electrophilic Pd(II) catalysis (Scheme 3.20). ° Treatment of a functionalized allylic precursor with the Pd(II) catalysts listed facilitated an allylic C—H activation. Subsequent transmetallation of the aryl boronic acid and reductive elimination afforded the desired olefin with excellent stereoselectivity. The scope of the transformation allows for a variety of activating and deactivating substituents on the aryl boronic acid as well as numerous functional groups on the starting alkene. A tandem allylic C—H oxidation/vinylic arylation protocol has also been reported. " ... 

As a Carbon Nucleophile in Lewis Acid-Catalyzed Reactions. Allyltrimethylsilane is an alkene some 10 times more nucleophilic than propene, as judged by its reactions with di-arylmethyl cations. It reacts with a variety of cationic carbon electrophiles, usually prepared by coordination of a Lewis acid to a functional group, but also by chemical or electrochemical oxidation, or by irradiation in the presence of 9,10-dicyanoanthracene. The electrophile attacks the terminal alkenic... 

In 1974, Hegedus and coworkers reported the pa]ladium(II)-promoted addition of secondary amines to a-olefins by analogy to the Wacker oxidation of terminal olefins and the platinum(II) promoted variant described earlier. This transformation provided an early example of (formally) alkene hydroamination and a remarkably direct route to tertiary amines without the usual problems associated with the use of alkyl halide electrophiles. 

The chemistry of alkynes is dominated by electrophilic addition reactions, similar to those of alkenes. Alkynes react with HBr and HC1 to yield vinylic halides and with Br2 and Cl2 to yield 1,2-dihalides (vicinal dihalides). Alkynes can be hydrated by reaction with aqueous sulfuric acid in the presence of mercury(ll) catalyst. The reaction leads to an intermediate enol that immediately isomerizes to yield a ketone tautomer. Since the addition reaction occurs with Markovnikov regiochemistry, a methyl ketone is produced from a terminal alkyne. Alternatively, hydroboration/oxidation of a terminal alkyne yields an aldehyde. 

The mechanism of oxidation probably involves in most cases the initial formation of a glycol (15-35) or cyclic ester,and then further oxidation as in 19-7. In line with the electrophilic attack on the alkene, triple-bonds are more resistant to oxidation than double bonds. Terminal triple-bond compounds can be cleaved to carboxylic acids (RC=CHRCOOH) with thallium(III) nitrate or with [bis(trifluoroacetoxy)iodo]pentafluorobenzene, that is, C6F5l(OCOCF3)2, among other reagents. 

Again, the exclusive formation of six-membered rings indicates that the cyclization takes place by the electrophilic attack of a cationic center, generated from the enol ester moiety to the olefinic double bond. The eventually conceivable oxidation of the terminal double bond seems to be negligible under the reaction conditions since the halve-wave oxidation potentials E1/2 of enol acetates are + 1.44 to - - 2.09 V vs. SCE in acetonitrile while those of 1-alkenes are + 2.70 to -1- 2.90 V vs. Ag/0.01 N AgC104 in acetonitrile and the cyclization reactions are carried out at anodic potentials of mainly 1.8 to 2.0 V vs. SCE. 

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