Vinyllithium reagents deprotonation

The decomposition of the dianions of arenesulfonylhydrazones, known as the Shapiro reaction,4 is one of the most reliable ways of making vinyllithium reagents. In the earliest, and still widely used, version of the reaction,1 a ketone is condensed with p-toluenesulfonylhydrazine 1 to yield a crystalline hydrazone such as 2. Deprotonation of 2 with base (usually BuLi) gives a monoanion 3, which, if heated, decomposes to a carbene 4 in... 

The same reaction can be used for conversion of ketene bis(phenylthio)acetals (3) to the vinyllithium reagents 4. This method may be more useful in some cases than deprotonation of vinyl sulfides. Thus 4 generated in this way reacts as expected with cyclohexanone and carbon dioxide. Both these reactions fail when 4 is generated by deprotonation of vinyl sulfides. 

The conditions originally employed for the Shapiro reaction involved treatment of the sulfonylhydrazone derivative with an alkyllithium reagent in hexane or ether solvent. Although these conditions are quite effective for the conversion of sulfonylhydrazones to alkenes (e.g., 1—>2), efforts to capture the intermediate vinyllithium reagent with electrophiles other than H+ are often met with limited success due to competing deprotonation of the solvent or the sulfonyl aryl group by the basic vinyllithium species. For example, treatment of 15a with >2 equiv of n-BuLi in hexane followed by quenching with D2O provided 16 in quantitative yield but with only -10% deuterium incorporation. A solution to this problem was developed independently by Shapiro and Bond that employs TMEDA (tetramethylethylenediamine) as an additive for Shapiro reactions.7,10 As shown below, use of TMEDA (4.0 equiv) as a cosolvent led to the conversion of 15b to 16 in quantitative yield with 95% deuterium incorporation. 

The difluorovinylzinc reagent 19 was generated by treating the corresponding vinyllithium 18, derived from deprotonation of terminal fluoroolefin 17, with ZnCh. Subsequent coupling of 19 with 2-iodobenzothiazole gave adduct 20 stereoselectively [17]. 

Early work has shown that the reaction of simple organolithium reagents with oxiranes lead mainly to products from a- or -deprotonation and not from the desired ring opening reaction. However, some reactions of methyllithium , aUyllithium , aryllithiums" , and vinyllithium/potassium reagents " with oxiranes are reported (Scheme 36). 

Meyers and Shimano discovered the unusual deprotonation behavior of ethoxy-vinyllithium-HMPA complex (EVL-HMPA) for the deprotonation of the trans-oxazoline 366 and the cw-oxazoline 367. The EVL-HMPA complex is prepared by deprotonation of ethyl vinyl ether with ferf-butyllithium in THE followed by addition of HMPA. Reaction of the frani-oxazoline 366 with both the EVL-HMPA complex and conventional alkyllithium reagents (RLi) resulted in deprotonation at the benzylic 5-position. In contrast, deprotonation of 367 occurred at the 4-position with an alkyllithium reagent RLi, whereas benzylic deprotonation predominated with the EVL-HMPA complex (Scheme 8.117). ° The authors proposed that EVL-HMPA complexes with the 5-phenyl substituent prior to deprotonation. 

The carbamate substituted DHP derivative 647 has been deprotonated with f-BuLi in THF at — 78 °C to give the vinyllithium 648950 (Scheme 169). This reagent has been functionalized with a variety of electrophiles in good yields. The iodinated derivative 649 (X = I) underwent Suzuki-Miyaura couplings with arylboronic acids to afford the corresponding a-arylated DHPs. 

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