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group may exhibit a higher radical addition rate relative to
analogous alkene acceptors.
the National Science Foundation of China (20321101), the Anhui
5
Provincial Bureau of Personnel Affairs (2001Z019) and the Anhui
Provincial Natural Science Foundation (00045306) for financial
support.
Some of the above reactions have also been tentatively carried
out in organic solvents. But the result is much poorer than that of the
current mechanical milling procedure. In fact, it is very difficult to
obtain the imines quantitatively in the presence of organic solvents.
For example, when the reaction of 4-chlorobenzaldehyde with one
Notes and references
equivalent of 4-methylaniline was carried out in CH
temperature, it was hard to achieve completion, even overnight.
Isolation of imine 3d was attempted in the second step in CH CN
at room temperature for 6 h, but this condition led to the hydrolysis
of the imine and thus a very complicated reaction mixture, which
mainly contained the following organic compounds: unreacted
imine and dimedone, 4-chlorobenzaldehyde and 4-methylaniline
from the hydrolysis of imine 3d, condensation product from
3
CN at room
1 For reviews, see: (a) J. Iqbal, B. Bhatia and N. K. Nayyar, Chem. Rev.,
1994, 94, 519; (b) B. B. Snider, Chem. Rev., 1996, 96, 339; (c) G. G.
Melikyan, in Organic Reactions, Vol. 49, ed. L. Paquette, John Wiley,
New York, 1997, ch. 3, p. 427; ; For recent examples of Mn(III)-based
radical reactions, see: (d) D. Yang, X.-Y. Ye, M. Xu, K.-W. Pang and K.
K. Cheung, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2000, 122, 1658; (e) B. B. Snider and R.
B. Smith, Tetrahedron, 2002, 58, 25.
3
2
(a) D. T. Davies, N. Kapur and A. F. Parsons, Tetrahedron, 2000, 56,
3
7
941; (b) J. Cossy, A. Bouzide and C. Leblanc, J. Org. Chem., 2000, 65,
257; (c) D. Yang, M. Xu and M.-Y. Bian, Org. Lett., 2001, 3, 111; (d)
4
-chlorobenzaldehyde with dimedone and a trace of desired
8
product 5d. To further investigate this reaction, we have examined
some other metal salts like those of Ce(IV) and Cu(II), which have
also been extensively studied and proved to be efficient catalysts
for the generation of carbon-centered radicals. As an example,
under these solid-state conditions, compound 5e was obtained in
only 36% yield when catalyzed by Ce(IV) ammonium nitrate
B. B. Snider and Q. L. Che, Tetrahedron, 2002, 58, 7821; (e) G. Bar, A.
F. Parsons and C. B. Thomas, Chem. Commun., 2001, 1350; (f) T.-H.
Zhang, P. Lu, F. Wang and G.-W. Wang, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2003, 1,
4
403; (g) G.-W. Wang, T.-H. Zhang, X. Cheng and F. Wang, Org.
Biomol. Chem., 2004, 2, 1160.
3
4
C. Suryanarayana, Prog. Mater. Sci., 2001, 46, 1.
(a) G.-W. Wang, K. Komastu, Y. Murata and M. Shiro, Nature, 1997,
(CAN). In the presence of Cu(OAc)
2
, compound 5e could not be
3
87, 583; (b) G. Kaupp, J. Schmeyers, A. Kuse and A. Atfeh, Angew.
generated at all.
Chem., Int. Ed., 1999, 38, 2896; (c) V. P. Balema, J. W. Wiench, M.
Pruski and V. K. Pecharsky, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2002, 124, 6244; (d) S.
Wada, M. Urano and H. Suzuki, J. Org. Chem., 2002, 67, 8254; (e) Z.
Zhang, Y.-W. Dong, G.-W. Wang and K. Komastu, Synlett, 2004, 15,
61.
Among several modes of radical addition to the CNN bond, the
most common one is the reductive addition to obtain amines.5
Non-reductive additions had been realized to a much lesser
,9
extent.5,10 But considered from the synthetic perspective, they were
5
6
(a) G. K. Friestad, Tetrahedron, 2001, 57, 5461; (b) A. G. Fallis and I.
M. Brinza, Tetrahedron, 1997, 53, 17543.
Typical procedure is as follows: a mixture of aldehyde (0.2 mmol) and
greatly neglected and underdeveloped. Herein, the imines act as
radical acceptors for the radical addition followed by oxidation with
Mn(OAc) , thus the original CNN bond was reinstalled, which can
3
4
-methylaniline (0.2 mmol) was introduced, together with a stainless
be reasonably anticipated as a new route to subsequent synthesis of
unsymmetrical ketones and employed for further other functional-
izations. Interestingly, all the products were obtained exclusively in
an enol form under this condition. The identification of these enols
steel ball of 7.0 mm diameter, into a stainless steel jar (5 mL). The same
mixture was introduced into another parallel jar. The two reaction
vessels were closed and fixed on the vibration arms of a ball-milling
apparatus (Retsch MM200 mixer mill, Retsch GmbH, Haan, Germany),
and were milled vigorously at a rate of 1800 rpm at room temperature
for 1 h. To the in situ generated imines in the two jars were added 0.2
1
13
is unequivocally ascertained by H NMR, C NMR, HRMS, and
6
1
FT-IR spectra. The singlet at about 14.7 ppm in the H NMR
spectra, the signal at about 195–200 ppm in the C NMR spectra
and the strong absorption at about 3440 cm21 in the IR spectra all
1
3
3 2
mmol of 1,3-cyclohexanedione and 0.4 mmol of Mn(OAc) ·2H O,
respectively. Then the reaction vessels were allowed to continue to
vibrate for 3 h. The resulting mixtures were kept overnight and extracted
with ethyl acetate and the desired product was separated by flash column
chromatography over silica gel. The spectral data for representative
compound 5a: IR (KBr) nmax 3434, 2952, 1652, 1598, 1548, 1517, 1447,
strongly support their molecular structures. It can be easily
understood that the main contribution to the remarkably high
stability of the enols is the high conjugation and thus the high
delocalization of the p electron cloud. Furthermore, the intra-
molecular hydrogen bond between the nitrogen atom in the CNN
group and the hydrogen atom in the hydroxyl group may also
contribute to stabilize this structure.
350 cm ; 1H NMR (300 MHz, CDCl
J = 8.67 Hz, 2H, Ar), 7.27 (d, J = 8.67 Hz, 2H, Ar), 6.94 (d, J = 8.31
Hz, 2H, Ar), 6.67 (d, J = 8.31 Hz, 2H, Ar), 2.58 (s, 2H, CH ), 2.31 (s,
2H, CH ), 2.23 (s, 3H, CH ), 1.11 (s, 6H, CH
3 2); 13C NMR (75 MHz,
CDCl ) d 200.78, 195.42, 167.29, 147.73, 141.20, 137.49, 133.83,
29.87 (2C), 128.91 (2C), 125.43 (2C), 123.61 (2C), 108.09, 53.20,
21
1
3
) d 14.68 (bs, 1H, OH), 8.13 (d,
2
2
3
3
In summary, we have developed a novel radical addition to
imines mediated by Mn(OAc) ·2H O under solid-state mecha-
3 2
3
1
5
+
2.53, 30.56, 28.57 (2C), 21.06; HR-MS (EI-TOF, m/z [M ]) Calc. for
378.1580, Found 378.1581.
nochemical conditions for the first time. The high efficiency and
good to excellent yield, no separation of the in situ generated
imines, no use of any solvents in carrying out the reactions and thus
the facile additional treatment make this method a potential
alternative to the traditional synthetic process. Furthermore, the
non-reductive radical addition mode and the corresponding struc-
ture of the products are intriguing, which impels us to explore other
22 22 2 4
C H N O
7
8
B. B. Snider and S. V. O’Neil, Tetrahedron, 1995, 51, 12983.
This result was obtained from a comparative evaluation on the HPLC
analyses of the mixture and each component. The measurements were
conducted on an Agilent 1100 liquid chromatograph with a diode-array
detector using a Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C18 column (4.6 mm 3 250 mm)
3 2
with CH OH/H O (4 : 1) as the eluent with monitoring at 254 nm.
9
Recent examples for reductive addition to CNN bonds: (a) N. Halland
and K. A. Jørgensen, J. Chem. Soc., Perkin Trans. 1, 2001, 1290; (b) G.
K. Friestad and J. Qin, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2001, 123, 9922; (c) H.
Miyabe, K. Fujii and T. Naito, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2003, 1, 381; (d) M.
Ueda, H. Miyabe, M. Teramachi, O. Miyata and T. Naito, Chem.
Commun., 2003, 426; (e) M. Ueda, H. Miyabe, A. Nishimura, H. Sugino
and T. Naito, Tetrahedron: Asymmetry, 2003, 14, 2857; (f) M.
Fernandez and R. Alonso, Org. Lett., 2003, 5, 2461; (g) G. K. Friestad,
Y.-H. Shen and E. L. Ruggles, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2003, 42, 5061;
1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and subsequent synthetic exploitation
on the useful functional groups that remain available in the
products. Work in this direction is under investigation.
We thank the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young
Scholars (20125205), the Fund for Innovative Research Groups of
(h) K. I. Yamada, Y. Yamamoto, M. Maekawa and K. Tomioka, J. Org.
Chem., 2004, 69, 1531.
1
0 Examples for non-reductive addition to CNN bonds: (a) A. Citterio and
L. Filippini, Synthesis, 1986, 473; (b) S. Kim, I. Y. Lee, J.-Y. Yoon and
D. H. Oh, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1996, 118, 5138; (c) S. Kim and J.-Y.
Yoon, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1997, 119, 5982.
Scheme 2
C h e m . C o m m u n . , 2 0 0 4 , 1 8 3 2 – 1 8 3 3
1833