.
Angewandte
Communications
Our initial reactions employed valerophenone in meth-
anol, with various transition metal catalysts and Cs2CO3 as
a base; early on we discovered the beneficial effect of
performing reactions under an atmosphere of oxygen, which
is unusual in the context of hydrogen-borrowing chemistry.
Interestingly, we also found that the alkylation of valerophe-
none by methanol was observed at temperatures as low as
658C,[18] implying that methanol dehydrogenation was taking
place under these relatively mild conditions.
Early experiments using catalytic amounts of [{Cp*IrCl2}2]
or [{Cp*RuCl2}n] gave a mixture of the desired a-methylated
ketone 2a, dimer 3a, enone 4a, and b-methoxyketone 5a
(Table 1, entries 1,2). The product distribution shows that,
and [Rh2(OAc)4] gave small amounts of the desired product
(entries 7–9). As a control experiment, the reaction was
performed in the absence of the Rh catalyst and no product
(2a) or intermediates were observed (entry 10). In reactions
that were run under argon (entry 11), the yield of 2a was
acceptable but inferior to that shown earlier (entry 3). A
further reaction with Cp*H as an additive, in the absence of
RhCl3, did not promote a reaction (entry 12).
We turned our attention to explore the substrate scope of
the methylation reaction (Table 2) and found that a ketone
with a shorter ethyl sidechain gave the product (2b) in 73%
yield. When varying the electronic properties of the aromatic
ring, good to high yields were obtained with electron-rich (2d,
2h, 2k) and electron-poor (2c, 2e, 2g, 2i, 2j) rings
and with heteroaromatic alkyl ketones (2l). We
found that electron-poor substrates required a lower
catalyst loading as well as shorter reaction times to
achieve optimal yields. For example, 2i was obtained
in 73% yield with 2.5 mol% of [{Cp*RhCl2}2] after
2 h versus in only 41% yield with 5 mol% of
[{Cp*RhCl2}2] after 4 h.[21] We think that this varia-
tion derives from 1,2-reduction of the carbonyl group
in both starting ketone and product and leads to an
undesired consumption of material. On the other
Table 1: Optimization of the a-methylation of ketone 1a (0.2m).[a]
Entry Conditions
Yield [%]
(Æ)-2a
3a
4a (Æ)-5a
hand, an electron-rich aniline substrate (2h)
required portionwise catalyst addition and a longer
reaction time to reach full conversion. Notably,
halogen-substituted substrates (2c, 2e, 2g, 2j) are
tolerated under the reaction conditions.
Many products 2 were formed in good to
excellent yields, significantly extending the scope of
the reaction and showing that other primary alkyl
chains were compatible with the methylation. Fur-
thermore, the reaction was found to work well with
b-substitution on the alkyl chains: high to excellent
yields of the a-methylation products 2m,n were
1
2
5 mol% [{Cp*IrCl2}2]
10 mol% [Cp*RuCl2]
42
<2
12
19
14
23
27
39
3
5mol% [{Cp*RhCl2}2]
5 mol% [{Cp*RhCl2}2]
10 mol% RhCl3·H2O
10 mol% RhCl3·H2O, 10 mol% Cp*H
10 mol% RhCl3·H2O, 10 mol% PPh3
10 mol% [RhCl(PPh3)3]
5 mol% [Rh2(OAc)4]
no catalyst
5 mol% [{Cp*RhCl2}2], argon
10 mol% Cp*H
98
53
14
74
15
23
10
n/o n/o n/o
33 n/o n/o
4[b]
5
10
8
12
18
n/o n/o
27 44
30
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
n/o n/o n/o
21 23
<5 n/o n/o
n/o n/o
5
n/o (98)[c]
57
9
n/o (86)[c] trace n/o n/o
[a] n/o=not observed. All yields given are of isolated material. Compound 3a was obtained with KOH as a base. Unfortunately,
isolated as a 1:1 mixture of diastereomers. [b] 5 equiv of KOH instead of Cs2CO3.
[c] Yield of recovered starting material.
a stereogenic center at the b-position did not
induce diastereoselectivity under these reaction
conditions.
We also investigated the methylation of alkyl/
along with consumption of the starting material 1a, the
conjugate reduction process was interrupted by the addition
of nucleophiles to the enone 4a. Thus, in an attempt to
improve the yield of 2a, we turned to using Rh, a well-known
catalyst for 1,4-reduction.[19] When using 5 mol% of
[{Cp*RhCl2}2], a-methylation could be accomplished in
98% yield (entry 3); the use of a stronger base such as
KOH resulted in a higher amount of dimer 3a formed
(entry 4); RhCl3 gave a mixture of unreduced intermediates
(entry 5), whereas a respectable 74% yield of 2a was
achieved by using a mixture of RhCl3 and added Cp* ligand
(entry 6).[20] We were pleased to find that the reaction does
not require the use of anhydrous methanol or extra precau-
tions such as the exclusion of moisture, making this a highly
practical method when compared to the traditional lithium–
enolate alkylation methods.
alkyl ketone substrates. As alkylation does not occur on
secondary centers, site-selective alkylation was accomplished
on a-n-alkyl-a’-dialkyl ketones in 81% and 49% yields for 2s
and 2u, respectively. The lower yield obtained for 2u may be
due to the higher pKa value of the dialkylketone versus the
aryl–alkyl ketones. In this case, the slower reaction led to
decomposition of both substrate and product under the
reaction conditions. With double (a,a’) dimethylation reac-
tions we obtained 2t in 55% yield (74% yield per methyl-
ation), although no 1,3-diastereoselectivity was observed.
During our investigation, we noted that several of the
starting ketones required multi-step synthesis, usually via the
corresponding Weinreb amides. The wide commercial acces-
sibility of many methyl ketones encouraged us to examine the
double alkylation of these substrates (Scheme 2A). Ketone
2k was synthesized directly from the corresponding methyl
ketone in 56% yield (i.e., 75% yield per methylation). Direct
access to isopropyl ketones 2v and 2w from commercially
When testing other Rh complexes, we found that RhI,
RhII, and RhIII complexes such as RhCl3/PPh3, [RhCl(PPh3)3],
762
ꢀ 2014 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 761 –765