Organocatalytic Decarboxylative Cyanomethylation of Difluoromethyl and Trifluoromethyl Ketones

Enantioseparation and racemization of 3-fluorooxindoles

Fluorinated oxindoles are frequently used building blocks in asymmetric synthesis and represent an important scaffold found in a variety of biologically relevant compounds. While it is understood that incorporation of fluorine atoms into organic molecules can improve their pharmacological properties, the impact on the configurational stability of chiral organofluorines is still underexplored. In this study, semipreparative HPLC enantioseparations of five oxindoles were carried out, and the resulting enantiomerically enriched solutions were used to investigate base promoted racemization kinetics at room temperature. It was found that incorporation of fluorine at the chiral center increases the configurational stability, while substitutions on the aromatic ring and at the lactam moiety also have significant effects on the rate of racemization, which generally follows reversible first-order reaction kinetics.

Selective Csp3-F Bond Functionalization with Lithium Iodide

A highly efficient method for C-F bond functionalization of a broad variety of activated and unactivated aliphatic substrates with inexpensive lithium iodide is presented. Primary, secondary, tertiary, benzylic, propargylic and α-functionalized alkyl fluorides react in chlorinated or aromatic solvents at room temperature or upon heating to the corresponding iodides which are isolated in 91-99% yield. The reaction is selective for aliphatic monofluorides and can be coupled with in situ nucleophilic iodide replacements to install carbon-carbon, carbon-nitrogen and carbon-sulfur bonds with high yields. Alkyl difluorides, trifluorides, even in activated benzylic positions, are inert under the same conditions and aryl fluoride bonds are also tolerated.

Palladium and Nickel Catalyzed Suzuki Cross-Coupling with Alkyl Fluorides

Suzuki cross-coupling of benzylic and unactivated aliphatic fluorides with aryl- and alkenylboronic acids has been achieved via mechanistically distinct Pd and Ni catalyzed pathways that outperform competing protodeboronation, β-hydride elimination, and homocoupling processes. The utility is demonstrated with more than 20 examples including heterocyclic structures, 1,1-disubstituted and trans-1,2-disubstituted alkenes, and by the incorporation of acetonitrile into functionalized (hetero)arenes.

Enantioseparation and racemization of α-aryl-α-fluoroacetonitriles

The 2-Aryl-2-fluoroacetonitriles have garnered increasing interest as versatile building blocks in asymmetric synthesis. However, the configurational stability of these organofluorines is poorly understood and analytical methods that can be used to differentiate between their enantiomers remain underdeveloped. In this study, baseline high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) enantioseparation of ten 2-aryl-2-fluoroacetonitriles was achieved by screening frequently used chiral stationary phases. While Chiralcel OD, Chiralpak AD, and Chiralpak AS proved to be most broadly useful, preparative separation of the enantiomers of 2-(2-naphthyl)-2-fluoroacetonitrile was possible on Chiralcel OJ. This enabled racemization studies at various temperatures and in the presence of organic bases which showed that this compound is configurationally stable under neutral conditions upon heating to 130°C for 6 h but undergoes complete racemization within 10 h in the presence of stoichiometric amounts of a guanidine base at room temperature. The racemization is likely to proceed via formation of an achiral keteniminate intermediate and obeys reversible first-order reaction kinetics with a half-life time of 87.7 min in ethanolic hexanes at 23.2°C. Racemization is significantly slower and occurs with a half-life time of 23.1 h at 22.4°C when the guanidine is replaced with a weaker amidine base.

A computational study for the reaction mechanism of metal-free cyanomethylation of aryl alkynoates with acetonitrile

A computational study of metal-free cyanomethylation and cyclization of aryl alkynoates with acetonitrile is carried out employing density functional theory and high-level coupled-cluster methods, such as coupled-cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples [CCSD(T)]. Our results indicate that the reaction of aryl alkynoates with acetonitrile in the presence of tert-butyl peroxybenzoate (TBPB) under metal-free conditions tends to proceed through cyanomethylation, spirocyclization and ester migration of the kinetically favoured coumarin derivatives. 1,2-Ester migration in the spiro-radical intermediate 10 does not proceed via the formation of the carboxyl radical 11 suggested by Sun and co-workers. Our results also demonstrate that the t-butoxy radical is substantially responsible the formation of the cyanomethyl radical by the abstraction of a hydrogen atom from acetonitrile.

A computational study of metal-free cyanomethylation and cyclization of aryl alkynoates with acetonitrile is carried out employing density functional theory and high-level coupled-cluster methods, such as [CCSD(T)].