Titanium-coupling dialdehydes

The McMuny coupling route has been utilised by Iwalsuki and co-workers the synthesis of PDBoxTV 85 (Scheme 1-29) [129]. Dialdehyde 90 is polynn ized in the presence of titanium tetrachloride and zinc dust. Molecular weights 35000 are reported and the polymer is freely soluble in solvents such as chloi form. The reported absorption maximum (605 nm) was close to that observed I the Blohm route [I27J. 

The synthesis of soluble PPV derivatives (82), via McMurry-type coupling of solubilized aromatic dialdehydes in the presence of low-valent titanium reagents, was described by Schliiter et al. [105]. The products are characterized... 

Reductive coupling of dialdehydes may also be accomplished by use of samarium(II) iodide514. The reactions is stereoselective and has been used to prepare myo-inositol derivatives (equation 132)515. The equivalent reaction, using low-valent titanium species as catalysts, results in a mixture of products516. The production of cyclic /1-amino alcohols may be accomplished in good yields, and with a high degree of cis selectivity by the treatment of carbonyl hydrazones with samarium(II) iodide (equation 133)517. This reaction is effectively equivalent to an aza-Barbier reaction. 

The first total synthesis of ( )-sarcophytol B (5) from S./i-famesal (92), which was reported by McMurry et al. in 1989, used a low-temperature titanium-induced pinacol coupling reaction of 1,14-dialdehyde as the key step. They concluded that the natural sarcophytol B has the stereochemistry of a trans diol (Scheme 6-5). Li et al. reported on a concise total synthesis of ( )-sarcophytol B (5) from /i./i-famesol (91) by a low-valent titanium-mediated intramolecular McMurry... 

Several other methods for the synthesis of PPVs have been described in the literature. The McMurry reaction, which consists of the deoxygenative coupling of aromatic dialdehydes in the presence of titanium compounds, has been employed to obtain 2,5-dihexyl-PPVs [69], para- and meta-FFV (20) [70], Scheme 11, the latter very unlikely to be prepared by the Wessling-Zinmerman or electrochemical routes, since there is no possibility of forming the required quinodimethane intermediate. Nevertheless, a drawback of this method is the somewhat tedious workup needed for the isolation of insoluble PPVs from the elementary metal powder (Ti and/or Zn), which is also produced. 

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