Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201002673
Gold Catalysis
Gold(I)-Catalyzed Cycloisomerization of Enynes Containing
Cyclopropenes**
Changkun Li, Yi Zeng, Hang Zhang, Jiajie Feng, Yan Zhang, and Jianbo Wang*
Transition-metal-catalyzed cycloisomerizations of enynes
have recently been extensively studied. In particular, gold
catalysts have been shown to be highly efficient in this type of
reactions, which provide rapid and atom economical access to
a variety of cyclic structural motifs.[1,2] Previous investigations
have demonstrated that the reaction pathway is highly
substrate-dependent. In the absence of external nucleophiles,
the alkene moiety usually acts as a nucleophile to attack the
gold-activated alkyne moiety and trigger skeletal rearrange-
ment. In the case of 1,5-enyne systems, gold-catalyzed
reactions lead to the formation of [3.1.0] bicyclic compounds,
cyclopropene makes it highly reactive toward transition metal
catalysis. Recently, gold-catalyzed reactions of cyclopropenes
have been reported.[7] These reports show that gold com-
plexes can efficiently interact with the double bond of
cyclopropene to trigger ring-opening of the cyclopropene.
Inspired by these findings, we became interested in the gold-
catalyzed reaction of a system that contained both triple-bond
and cyclopropene moieties, such as the propargyl cyclopro-
pene shown in Scheme 1c. As triple bonds and cyclopropenes
are supposed to have similar reactivities toward gold com-
plexes, an intriguing question would be which unsaturated
bond is preferentially activated by a gold catalyst. Further-
more, the propargyl cyclopropene can be considered as a 1,5-
enyne system. Thus, we were also intrigued as to whether it
reacts in a similar manner to conventional 1,5-enynes. Herein,
we report a highly efficient gold-catalyzed rearrangement of
propargyl cyclopropenes, which affords benzene derivatives.
The triple bond is preferentially activated by gold catalyst and
the reaction may proceed through a novel mechanism
involving multiple alkyl migrations.
presumably through
a cyclopropylcarbene intermediate
(Scheme 1a).[3] When there is a siloxy substituent at the
terminal position of the alkyne moiety, the gold-catalyzed
reaction gives cyclohexadienes through a mechanism involv-
ing a series of alkyl migrations (Scheme 1b).[4]
At the outset, we examined the reactivity of 3-hydroxy
substituted propargyl cyclopropene 1a with transition metal
catalysts (Table 1). To our delight, with 1 mol% of AuCl or
AuCl3, an efficient reaction occurred in 5 minutes to afford
phenol derivative 2a in high yield (Table 1, entries 1 and 2).
AgOTf also catalyzed this transformation, but the reaction
took much longer to complete (Table 1, entry 3). The yield
was improved by using [Au(PPh3)Cl]/AgOTf (Table 1,
entry 4). PtCl2 also gave high yield of 2a, but it took 6 hours
for the reaction to complete (Table 1, entry 5). We also
examined In(OTf)3 and HOTf; the former afforded trace
amount of product and the latter gave no desired product.
Scheme 1. Gold-catalyzed cycloisomerizations of 1,5-enynes. TIP-
S=triisopropylsilyl.
On the other hand, cyclopropenes have attracted consid-
erable attention from the synthetic community as a result of
their diverse reactivity.[5] The high steric ring strain of
cyclopropenes give them a comparable character to alkynes;[6]
in particular, the high p-density of the double bond in
Table 1: Catalytic cycloisomerization of 1a.[a]
[*] C. Li, Y. Zeng, H. Zhang, J. Feng, Dr. Y. Zhang, Prof. Dr. J. Wang
Beijing National Laboratory of Molecular Sciences (BNLMS) and
Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering
of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry
Peking University, Beijing 100871 (China)
Entry
Catalyst
Reaction time [min]
Yield [%][b]
Fax: (+86)10-6275-1708
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
AuCl
AuCl3
AgOTf
[Au(PPh3)Cl]/AgOTf
PtCl2
5
5
120
5
360
120
120
88
82
86
96
94
<5
0
E-mail: wangjb@pku.edu.cn
home.htm
[**] The project is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 20902005, 20832002, 20772003, 20821062) and
the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant
No. 2009CB825300).
In(OTf)3
HOTf
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
[a] All reactions were carried out using 50 mg of 1a in 3 mL CH2Cl2.
[b] Yield of isolated product. Tf=trifluoromethanesulfonyl.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2010, 49, 6413 –6417
ꢀ 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
6413