DOI: 10.1002/anie.201007594
Fluorinated Sulfonates
From Difluoromethyl 2-Pyridyl Sulfone to Difluorinated Sulfonates:
A Protocol for Nucleophilic Difluoro(sulfonato)methylation**
G. K. Surya Prakash,* Chuanfa Ni, Fang Wang, Jinbo Hu, and George A. Olah*
Fluorine, characterized by its small size and high electro-
negativity, often furnishes organic molecules with unequalled
chemical and biological properties including stability, lip-
ophilicity, and bioavailability.[1] The sulfonic acid functional
group has not only found its use in modern materials such as
proton-exchange membranes and surfactants,[2] but also in
synthetic molecules with important biological and pharmaco-
logical activities such as antiulcer, antibacterial, antipseudo-
monal, and squalene synthase inhibition activities.[3] Based on
this scenario, a,a-difluorinated sulfonate derivatives, as an
important subclass of lightly fluorinated compounds, are of
great interest in life and materials sciences. Furthermore,
owing to the isopolar and isosteric characters of the difluoro-
methylene group to an oxygen atom, difluorinated sulfonates
can be exploited to replace the labile sulfate esters.[1d]
Although a,a-difluorinated phosphonic acids have been
used to inhibit and probe enzymes and proteins that bind or
hydrolyze phosphate for many years, only in recent years,
attention has been paid on a,a-difluorinated sulfonates to
design effective sulfatase inhibitors.[4,6] Moreover, in relation
with the perfluorinated sulfonic acids and their derivatives,
the performance of these difluorinated counterparts are also
of great interest in materials science owing to their acidity and
facile biodegradability.[5] Thus, many a,a-difluorinated sulfo-
nates have been synthesised using different protocols, includ-
ing the electrophilic fluorination of the sulfonates,[4c,6] dehalo-
sulfination or -sulfonation of a,a-difluoroalkyl halides,[7a–c]
sulfonation of 1,1-difluoroalkenes,[7d] sulfination of a,a-
difluorosilanes,[7e] and fluorinated sultone rearrangements.[7f]
Apparently, one of the disadvantages of these protocols is that
the fluorine atoms and sulfonato group have to be incorpo-
rated sequentially.
Based on nucleophilic fluoroalkylation,[8] one can envi-
sion a nucleophilc difluoro(sulfonato)methylation pathway
for the direct introduction of difluoro(sulfonato)methyl group
into organic frameworks. Indeed, Li and Liu had reported a
nucleophilic introduction of a difluoromethylene sulfonamide
group (-CF2SO2NR2) into aromatic aldehydes.[9] However,
these synthons are not ideal for the introduction of the
sulfonic acid functional group owing to the sluggish hydrolysis
rates of the sulfonamides. Our initial attempts towards this
goal involved treating difluoromethanesulfonates (as pronu-
cleophiles) and alkyl iodides (as electrophiles) under basic
conditions. These attempts failed as a result of the instability
and low reactivity of difluoromethanesulfonates anions
(Scheme 1, for details, see the Supporting Information), thus
implying that there are some challenges in the nucleophilic
difluoro(sulfonato)methylation reaction.
Scheme 1. Attempted nucleophilic difluoro(sulfonato)methylation reac-
tion of alkyl iodides with difluoromethanesulfonates.
It is well known that alkyl sulfonyl-substituted heteroar-
omatic compounds can readily undergo ipso-substitution
reaction with nucleophiles, thus giving the corresponding
heteroaromatics and alkyl sulfinates.[10] However, to the best
of our knowledge, there has been no report on the synthetic
utility of heteroaryl sulfones as sulfinate or sulfonate equiv-
alents in the nucleophilic (sulfonato)methylation reactions.[11]
Herein, we disclose a new synthetic application of difluor-
omethyl sulfones as a difluoro(sulfonato)methyl equivalent
(-CF2SO3À), which enables a unique synthesis of a,a-difluor-
oalkyl sulfonates from primary alkyl halides and primary
alcohol triflates (Scheme 2).
To realize this nucleophilic substitution, the reaction
between difluoromethyl heteroaryl or electron-deficient aryl
sulfones and alkyl halides or sulfonates were examined with
extensive screening of the reaction conditions (Table 1).
Surprisingly, by applying the reported optimal reaction
conditions for the nucleophilic substitution of difluoromethyl
phenyl sulfone with alkyl iodides,[12] only difluoromethyl 2-
pyridyl sulfone 1b gave a detectable amount of substituted
product (Table 1, entries 1–4). In all cases, the decomposition
of the difluoromethyl sulfones was observed as the predom-
inant outcome. The preliminary results showed that these aryl
substituents were less effective for the stabilization of
difluoromethyl anions in comparison with the phenyl group.
To suppress the decomposition of the anion species, the
[*] Prof. Dr. G. K. S. Prakash, Dr. C. Ni, F. Wang, Prof. Dr. G. A. Olah
Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and
Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California
University Park, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1661 (USA)
Fax: (+1)213-740-6679
E-mail: gprakash@usc.edu
Prof. Dr. J. Hu
Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry
Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, CAS
345 Ling-ling Road, Shanghai 200032 (China)
[**] Support of our work by the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute is
gratefully acknowledged. J.H. also thanks the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (20825209, 20832008) for financial
support.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 2559 –2563
ꢀ 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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