Tetrahedron Letters
Efficient synthesis of
a
-substituted ethylphosphonates via CuH-
catalyzed conjugate reduction of terminal alkenylphosphonate
c,
d
a,
d
b
b
Li Zhang a, Yewen Fang b,e, , Xiaoping Jin , Ting Guo , Ruifeng Li , Yan Li , Xie Li , Yi Yang ,
⇑
⇑
⇑
Meijuan Yuan a, Zongming Tian c
a College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, No. 79 West Yingze Street, Taiyuan 030024, China
b School of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Ningbo University of Technology, No. 201 Fenghua Road, Ningbo 315211, China
c Department of Biology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang Pharmaceutical College, No. 888 Yinxian Avenue East, Ningbo 315100, China
d Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials and Ministry-of-Education Key Laboratory for Synthesis and Application of Organic
Functional Molecules, Hubei University, No. 368 Youyi Dadao, Wuhan 430062, China
e Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 345 Lingling Road, Shanghai 200032, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
An unprecedented approach toward synthesis of
a-substituted ethylphosphonates based on CuH-cat-
Received 29 August 2017
Revised 16 October 2017
Accepted 17 October 2017
Available online xxxx
alyzed conjugate reduction of vinylphosphonates has been successfully developed. This protocol features
mild conditions, broad substrate scope, good functional group compatibility, high overall efficiencies, and
easy gram-scale synthesis. The Cu-catalyzed reduction takes place in a highly selective manner on the
phosphono substituted C@C bond in the case of the reaction of alkenylphosphonates bearing both phos-
phono and alkyl or aryl substituted alkene moieties. Furthermore, the result of competitive reaction indi-
cates that the Cu-catalyzed conjugate reduction of vinylphosphonate is more challenging and
reproducible than the corresponding acrylate’s reaction.
Keywords:
a-Substituted ethylphosphonate
Conjugate reduction
CuH catalysis
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Chemoselective reduction
Introduction
several years, many efforts have been devoted to developing effi-
cient metal-catalyzed methods. As for the Ni-catalyzed Hiyama
Amongst the various phosphorus compounds,
a-substituted
coupling,6 only one example was reported on the coupling of
a-
ethylphosphonates continue to receive great attention because
they could be considered as phosphorus-containing analogues of
brominated ethylphosphonate with p-toly silane. Furthermore, in
the case of Cu-catalyzed reductive coupling of N-tosylhydrazones
and H-phosphonates,7 moderate to high yields were observed
under somewhat harsh conditions. Additionally, the method based
on the Pd-catalyzed hydrophosphorylation of olefins is attractive
because of its high atom economy and efficiency. However, the
expected Markovnikov products were always contaminated by
the anti-Markovnikov adducts.8 In comparison with the above-
a
-substituted propionic acids, well-known non-steroidal anti-
inflammatory drugs such as naproxen and ibuprofen.1 Therefore,
-substituted ethylphosphonates may find applications in the
search for new potent antipsychotic drugs. Moreover, -ary-
a
a
lalkylphosphonates have been demonstrated to exhibit negative
inotropic and calcium antagonistic activity.2 They were also widely
employed as haptens for reactive immunization.3 As a conse-
quence, significant progress has been achieved for the preparation
mentioned methods, hydrogenation of
a-substituted vinylphos-
phonates represents the versatile and straightforward approach.
These methods fall into the following three categories based on
the resource of hydrogen: (i) hydrogen pressure reduction9; (ii)
hydrogen transfer reduction9c,10; (iii) diimide reduction.11
Given the dangerous handling of gaseous hydrogen and the
employment of a large excess amount of hydrazine in noncatalytic
diimide reduction, reduction of alkenes based on catalytic hydro-
gen transfer offers advantages such as operational simplicity, low
requirement of equipment, and economical fashion. However, in
the case of the hydrogen transfer reduction using a HCOONH4/
Pd/C system, hydrodehalogenation as a side reaction often occurs
over most metal catalysts employed.9c We hypothesized that the
of
a
-substituted ethylphosphonates.
Compared to the Arbuzov reaction of triethyl phosphite with
arylethyl bromides4 and other noncatalytic protocols,5 the catalytic
approaches toward the synthesis of -substituted ethylphospho-
a-
a
nates are undoubtedly more powerful and appealing. In the last
⇑
Corresponding authors at: School of Materials and Chemical Engineering,
Ningbo University of Technology, No. 201 Fenghua Road, Ningbo 315211, China (Y.
Fang).
0040-4039/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.