Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201203588
À
C F Bond Activation
À
Umpolung of Fluoroform by C F Bond Activation: Direct
Difluoromethylation of Lithium Enolates
Toshiaki Iida, Ryota Hashimoto, Kohsuke Aikawa, Shigekazu Ito, and Koichi Mikami*
À
The synthesis of organofluorine compounds has flourished
because of the wide scope of their applications in biological
and material sciences in recent years.[1] Difluoromethyl
fuctionalized compounds in particular are employed because
of their significantly increased lipophilicity, membrane per-
meability, aqueous solubility, and metabolic stability, as
exemplified by the anesthetic Desflurane, anticancer Gem-
citabine, respiratory Roflumilast derivatives, antiulcer
(À)-Pantoprazole, and antiviral difluoromethoxyquinolone
Garenoxacin.[2] Generally, synthetic methods for the fluoro-
methylation reactions involve radical, electrophilic, or nucle-
ophilic reactions.[1,3,4] In particular, the treatment of fluoro-
form with sodium or potassium alkoxide in DMF affords its
trifluoromethyl adduct.[5] Fluoroform can thus be employed
as the nucleophilic trifluoromethyl carbanion equivalent for
non-enolizable carbonyl compounds. Herein we wish to
report our polarity-inversion approach, namely the umpo-
lung[6] of fluoroform by activation of an inert carbon–fluorine
of lithium enolates with fluoroform by using a C F bond
À
activation is described. A direct Csp2 F bond activation and
À
C C bond formation sequence can be attained with lithium
enolates, which take a central role in modern synthetic
organic chemistry.[13] The difluoromethyl products are bio-
logically and synthetically important, and therefore the
introduction of the difluoromethyl group into organic com-
pounds is of vital importance,[14] as shown for difluoromethyl
ethers[2] or a-difluoromethyl a-amino acids.[15]
The direct and simple a-difluoromethylation was found to
proceed with lithium enolates using fluoroform as the
difluoromethylating reagent (Scheme 2). The a-difluoro-
À
(C F) bond to formally generate a difluoromethyl carbocat-
ion equivalent (Scheme 1).
Scheme 2. Direct difluoromethylation of the lithium enolate with
fluoroform. Bn=benzyl, Ts=4-toluenesulfonyl.
Scheme 1. Umpolung of fluoroform with a lithium enolate.
methyl products were obtained with lithium enolates in
particular, even in the absence of late-transition-metal com-
plexes used to catalyze the Tamao–Kumada-type coupling of
[7]
À
C F bond activation has posed a challenge in trans-
À1
forming the inert C F bond (490 kJmol ; C C bond:
C
sp2-aromatic and -vinylic fluorides.[8,9] Among the alkaline
À
À
350 kJmolÀ1; C H bond: 420 kJmol ). Actually, only limited
metal enolates (Li, Na, K) generated with the metal
hexamethyldisilazide (MHMDS), only the lithium enolate
(from LHMDS) gave the a-difluoromethyl product because
of the strong Li–F interaction.[1] In contrast to LHMDS,
lithium diisopropylamide (LDA) did not give the a-difluoro-
methyl product, presumably because of the less bulky and
more coordinating secondary dialkylamine generated. The
present synthetic method provides difluoromethyl-substi-
tuted all-carbon quaternary centers,[16] the congested struc-
ture of which was confirmed by the X-ray analysis of 2a
(Scheme 2).[17] The a-difluoromethyl product 2a was thus
obtained even at low temperature (À788C). The formation of
difluorocyclopropane and the a-deuteriodifluoromethyl
product was not observed from the generation of difluoro-
methylene (difluorocarbene)[18–20] in the presence of electron-
rich olefins and upon quench with D2O, respectively.
À1
À
À
types of reactions have thus far been reported for C F bond
activation in the transition metal catalyzed cross-coupling of
C
sp2-hybridized systems.[8,9] Amii and Uneyama have
À
reviewed precedent reports on C F bond activation including
À
their own reductive C F bond cleavage of trifluoromethyl
ketones using a reducing metal.[10] In view of the environ-
mental issues,[11] hydrodefluorination of perfluoroalkanes was
recently developed by Douvris and Ozerov as an efficient
strategy for chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) degradation through
À
Si F bond formation using silylium carborane catalysts and
hydride sources.[12] Herein electrophilic difluoromethylation
[*] T. Iida, R. Hashimoto, Dr. K. Aikawa, Dr. S. Ito, Prof. Dr. K. Mikami
Department of Applied Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo 152-8552 (Japan)
The effect of the amount of the lithium amide base
(LHMDS) on the difluoromethylation of the lithium enolate
are shown in Table 1. An additional amount of LHMDS gave
E-mail: mikami.k.ab@m.titech.ac.jp
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 1 – 5
ꢀ 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
1
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