Titanium salts reductive cleavage

Low-valent metal salts have been used to bring about reductive cleavage of oximes. Corey and Rich-man used chromium(II) acetate to convert O-acetyl ketoximes into imines, which were hydrolyzed to ketones. " Aqueous titanium(III) chloride and vanadium(II) salts also reduce oximes again, the imines are usually hydrolyzed in situ, but some hindered imines, such as compound (37), are isolable." A method of preventing hydrolysis is to carry out the reduction in anhydrous conditions in the presence of an acylating agent. The products of such reactions, when applied to oximes of enolizable ketones, are en-amides. For example, these ketoximes are converted into A/-formylenamines when heated in acetonitrile with anhydrous titanium(III) acetate and acetic formic anhydride cyclohexanone oxime gives the en-amide (38 97% Scheme 22)." This type of reduction has been used by Barton and coworkers to prepare enamides from steroidal oximes. They reported that the reaction could be performed by acetic... 

A number of low-valent metal ions have been shown to reduce a-halocarbonyl compounds. The most commonly used species for this purpose have been chromium(II) and low-valent titanium " salts, although vanadium(II), samarium(II), iron(II) and tin(II) salts have also been used. 7 222 chloro, bromo and iodo ketones can all be reduced by chromium(II) and titanium(III) salts. Selective reductions are possible axial halides are reduced in preference to equatorial, and a,a-dihalo ketones can be selectively reduced to the corresponding monohalides (equation 10). 7 The use of samarium(II) iodide has recently been advocated for such a-cleavages.72 a-Halo esters and ketones are reduced instantaneously at -78 °C in excellent yields. a-Acetoxy esters are stable to this reagent. 

Probably the most popular carbon-carbon double-bond-forming reaction involving sulphur proceeds via the elimination of a sulphur-oxygen species. This is illustrated by a synthesis of 1,5-unsaturated dicarbonyl compounds (236) which proceeds by phenylthioalkylation of enolates (236a), using the phenyl-thioalkene (237), followed by ozonolysis and elimination of the sulphoxide moiety to provide the double bond. An alternative method for double-bond formation is shown in the preparation of alkenes R CH=CHR by reductive cleavage of the sulphide (238) with titanium salts, and demonstrates the versatility of sulphur in such double-bond formations. In the latter example... 

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