The Reaction of Trialkylboranes with Ethyl Bromoacetate

Trialkylboranes react with ethyl bromoacetate to give ethyl alkylacetates in good yields (6). As in other reactions of boranes, only one of the three alkyl groups is utilized 

A dry 5(X)-mI flask equipped with a thermometer, pressure-equalizing dropping funnel, and magnetic stirrer is flushed with nitrogen and then maintained under a static pressure of the gas. The flask is charged with 50 ml of tetrahydrofuran and 13.3 ml (0.15 mole) of cyclopentene, and then is cooled in an ice bath. Conversion to tricyclo-pentylborane is achieved by dropwise addition of 25 ml of a 1 M solution of diborane (0.15 mole of hydride see Chapter 4, Section 1 for preparation) in tetrahydrofuran. The solution is stirred for 1 hour at 25° and again cooled in an ice bath, and 25 ml of dry t-butyl alcohol is added, followed by 5.5 ml (0.05 mole) of ethyl bromoacetate. Potassium t-butoxide in /-butyl alcohol (50 ml of a 1 M solution) is added over a period of 10 minutes. There is an immediate precipitation of potassium bromide. The reaction mixture is filtered from the potassium bromide and distilled. Ethyl cyclopentylacetate, bp 101730 mm, 1.4398, is obtained in about 75% yield. Similarly, the reaction can be applied to a variety of olefins including 2-butene, cyclohexene, and norbornene. 

Photolysis of ketene with light of wavelength 300-370 m/x produces the reactive intermediate carbene, which is capable of a variety of insertion and addition reactions. 

More useful for synthetic purposes, however, is the combination of the zinc-copper couple with methylene iodide to generate carbene-zinc iodide complex, which undergoes addition to double bonds exclusively to form cyclopropanes (7). The base-catalyzed generation of halocarbenes from haloforms (2) also provides a general route to 1,1-dihalocyclopropanes via carbene addition, as does the nonbasic generation of dihalocarbenes from phenyl(trihalomethyl)mercury compounds. Details of these reactions are given below. 

Photolytically generated carbene, as mentioned above, undergoes a variety of undiscriminated addition and insertion reactions and is therefore of limited synthetic utility. The discovery (3) of the generation of carbenes by the zinc-copper couple, however, makes carbene addition to double bonds synthetically useful. The iodo-methylzinc iodide complex is believed to function by electrophilic addition to the double bond in a three-center transition state giving essentially cis addition. Use of the 

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