Ylide method

Spectroscopically invisible carbenes can be monitored by the ylide method .92 Here, the carbene reacts with a nucleophile Y to form a strongly absorbing and long-lived ylide, competitively with all other routes of decay. Although pyridine (Py) stands out as the most popular probe, nitriles and thiones have also been used. In the presence of an additional quencher, the observed pseudo-first-order rate constant for ylide formation is given by Eq. 2.92,93 A plot of obs vs. [Q] at constant [Y ] will provide kq. With Q = HX, complications can arise from protonation of Y and/or the derived ylides. The available data indicate that alcohols are compatible with the pyridine-ylide probe technique. 

In the 1988-1999 period, almost all absolute kinetic studies of carbenic reactions employed LFP with UV detection. Carbenes that contain a UV chromophore (e.g., PhCCl) are easily observed, and their decay kinetics during reaction can be readily followed by LFP.11 However, alkyl, alkylhalo, and alkylacyloxycarbenes are generally transparent in the most useful UV region. To follow their kinetics, Jackson et al. made use of the ylide method, 12 in which the laser-generated carbene (2) is competitively captured by (e.g.) pyridine, forming a chromophoric ylide (3, cf. Scheme 1). The observed pseudo first order rate constants (kobs) for the growth of ylide 3 at various concentrations of pyridine are monitored by UV spectroscopy, and obey Eq. 1. 

The pyridine ylide method also allows determination of the rate constants for the intermolecular reactions of carbenes with alkenes, alcohols, or other carbene... 

The pyridine ylide method depends on the effective trapping of the carbene by pyridine. At high pyridine concentrations every carbene produced by the laser pulse will be trapped as ylide, and the ylide s absorbance (Ay) will saturate or reach a plateau (A °). The magnitude of A ° will vary with carbene structure it will decrease with both the increasing ease of carbene rearrangement and the intervention of RIES during carbene generation.3... 

When the diazirine was decomposed thermally, avoiding its electronically excited state, the yield of fragmentation products dropped to 1-2%. Further analysis revealed that, under photolytic conditions, cyclobutenes 27 and 28 were formed from both the carbene (63%) and directly from the excited diazirine (17%) fragmentation accounted for the remainder of the material balance. LFP studies by the pyridine ylide method gave rate constants for 19 —> 27 (1.3 x 106 s-1) and 19 — 28 (2.5 x 105 s-1), with the 5-fold preference for CH2 migration to 27 over CMe2 migration to 28 attributed to differential steric effects.45... 

Carbene 103 undergoes 1,3-CH insertion to nortricyclene (105), but this reaction is either too rapid for LFP measurement by the pyridine ylide method (r <0.1 ns), or the insertion occurs by RIES of the precursor 2-norbomyldiazirine. Theoretically, a short lifetime is expected for 103 AG for the carbene insertion into the 6-endo-CU bond (103 — 105) is computed at 5.2 kcal/mol, about 6.7 kcal/mol less than the (unobserved) exo- 1,2-H shift to norbomene.16... 

C-C3H5 = cyclopropyl. m By pyridine ylide method. n By direct observation. 

The lifetime of formylcarbene was determined by transient absorption and grating spectroscopies.39 Photolysis of formyldiazomethane produces formylcarbene which can isomerize, kr, to ketene or react with pyridine (Scheme 4). Using the pyridine ylide method, the lifetime of singlet formylcarbene was estimated to be 150-730 ps in CH2CI2. This is in reasonable agreement with the lifetime of 900 ps determined by transient grating spectroscopy. 

Alkylcarbenes generally lack useful UV signals for LFP studies, but they can be indirectly visualized by the pyridine ylide method in which their intramolecular reactions compete kinetically with capture of the carbene by added pyridine. 

One of the most interesting products obtained from the capture of singlet nitrene 16e is ylide 22e produced by photolysis of 15e in pyridine (Scheme 4). Ylide 22e has a very intense absorption band with maximum absorption at 390 nm. The pyridine-ylide method was successfully used by our group to probe the dynamics of the fluoro-substituted singlet arylnitrenes - " -" ... 

Marcinek and Platz used the pyridine-ylide method to measure absolute rate constants of reactions of two para-substituted perfluorophenylnitrenes (16h, 16j) with pyridine, amines, isoprene. 2,3-dimethyl-2-butene and other quenchers (Table 11). 

The stereoisomeric mixture of -hydroxyalkyl selenides resulting from the reaction of the a-selenoalkyllithium and the carbonyl compound has been often cleanly and easily separated into its constituents by liquid chromatography on silica gel (Schemes 124,133,134, and 170 172).200.206.222,226,229,258 59 jj,jg has, therefore, allowed the synthesis of each of the two stereoisomers of various di- and tri-substituted alkenes (Schemes 124,170 and 171 Scheme 172, a) and epoxides (Scheme 124 Scheme 172, b), which are otherwise obtained as intractable mixtures of stereoisomers through the conventional phosphorus or sulfur ylide methods. Last but not least, 2-lithio-2-methylselenopropane can be used as the precursor of various compounds bearing gem dimethyl substituted carbons, such as squalene, oxido-squalene, lanosterol and cholesterol. Use of commercially available perdeuterated or Ci or — 2 acetone allows the straightforward synthesis of the corresponding labelled compounds... 

In summary, the pyridine ylide method has told us quite a lot about 1,2-hydrogen migration reactions of invisible carbenes. We learned that simple aUcyl and dialkyl carbenes are true intermediates with nanosecond lifetimes. The pyridine ylide method revealed that the rate of rearrangement of alkylcarbenes are influenced by the cationic stabilizing power of X k. increases as X = FI < CH ... 

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