In organic chemistry, an epoxide is a cyclic ether, where the ether forms a three-atom ring: two atoms of carbon and one atom of oxygen. This triangular structure has substantial ring strain, making epoxides highly reactive, more so than other ethers. They are produced on a large scale for many applications. In general, low molecular weight epoxides are colourless and nonpolar, and often volatile.
An enamine is an unsaturated compound derived by the condensation of an aldehyde or ketone with a secondary amine. Enamines are versatile intermediates.
Enantioselective synthesis, also called asymmetric synthesis, is a form of chemical synthesis. It is defined by IUPAC as "a chemical reaction in which one or more new elements of chirality are formed in a substrate molecule and which produces the stereoisomeric products in unequal amounts."
In organic chemistry, the Michael reaction or Michael 1,4 addition is a reaction between a Michael donor and a Michael acceptor to produce a Michael adduct by creating a carbon-carbon bond at the acceptor's β-carbon. It belongs to the larger class of conjugate additions and is widely used for the mild formation of carbon-carbon bonds.
Nucleophilic conjugate addition is a type of organic reaction. Ordinary nucleophilic additions or 1,2-nucleophilic additions deal mostly with additions to carbonyl compounds. Simple alkene compounds do not show 1,2 reactivity due to lack of polarity, unless the alkene is activated with special substituents. With α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds such as cyclohexenone it can be deduced from resonance structures that the β position is an electrophilic site which can react with a nucleophile. The negative charge in these structures is stored as an alkoxide anion. Such a nucleophilic addition is called a nucleophilic conjugate addition or 1,4-nucleophilic addition. The most important active alkenes are the aforementioned conjugated carbonyls and acrylonitriles.
The Johnson–Corey–Chaykovsky reaction is a chemical reaction used in organic chemistry for the synthesis of epoxides, aziridines, and cyclopropanes. It was discovered in 1961 by A. William Johnson and developed significantly by E. J. Corey and Michael Chaykovsky. The reaction involves addition of a sulfur ylide to a ketone, aldehyde, imine, or enone to produce the corresponding 3-membered ring. The reaction is diastereoselective favoring trans substitution in the product regardless of the initial stereochemistry. The synthesis of epoxides via this method serves as an important retrosynthetic alternative to the traditional epoxidation reactions of olefins.
The Petasis reaction is the multi-component reaction of an amine, a carbonyl, and a vinyl- or aryl-boronic acid to form substituted amines.
In chemistry, transfer hydrogenation is a chemical reaction involving the addition of hydrogen to a compound from a source other than molecular H2. It is applied in laboratory and industrial organic synthesis to saturate organic compounds and reduce ketones to alcohols, and imines to amines. It avoids the need for high-pressure molecular H2 used in conventional hydrogenation. Transfer hydrogenation usually occurs at mild temperature and pressure conditions using organic or organometallic catalysts, many of which are chiral, allowing efficient asymmetric synthesis. It uses hydrogen donor compounds such as formic acid, isopropanol or dihydroanthracene, dehydrogenating them to CO2, acetone, or anthracene respectively. Often, the donor molecules also function as solvents for the reaction. A large scale application of transfer hydrogenation is coal liquefaction using "donor solvents" such as tetralin.
In organic chemistry, organocatalysis is a form of catalysis in which the rate of a chemical reaction is increased by an organic catalyst. This "organocatalyst" consists of carbon, hydrogen, sulfur and other nonmetal elements found in organic compounds. Because of their similarity in composition and description, they are often mistaken as a misnomer for enzymes due to their comparable effects on reaction rates and forms of catalysis involved.
Asymmetric hydrogenation is a chemical reaction that adds two atoms of hydrogen to a target (substrate) molecule with three-dimensional spatial selectivity. Critically, this selectivity does not come from the target molecule itself, but from other reagents or catalysts present in the reaction. This allows spatial information to transfer from one molecule to the target, forming the product as a single enantiomer. The chiral information is most commonly contained in a catalyst and, in this case, the information in a single molecule of catalyst may be transferred to many substrate molecules, amplifying the amount of chiral information present. Similar processes occur in nature, where a chiral molecule like an enzyme can catalyse the introduction of a chiral centre to give a product as a single enantiomer, such as amino acids, that a cell needs to function. By imitating this process, chemists can generate many novel synthetic molecules that interact with biological systems in specific ways, leading to new pharmaceutical agents and agrochemicals. The importance of asymmetric hydrogenation in both academia and industry contributed to two of its pioneers — William Standish Knowles and Ryōji Noyori — being collectively awarded one half of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Within the area of organocatalysis, (thio)urea organocatalysis describes the use of ureas and thioureas to accelerate and stereochemically alter organic transformations. The effects arise through hydrogen-bonding interactions between the substrate and the (thio)urea. Unlike classical catalysts, these organocatalysts interact by non-covalent interactions, especially hydrogen bonding. The scope of these small-molecule H-bond donors termed (thio)urea organocatalysis covers both non-stereoselective and stereoselective reactions.
Lectka and co-workers developed a catalytic, asymmetric method to synthesize β-lactams.
In chemistry, the hydrogenation of carbon–nitrogen double bonds is the addition of the elements of dihydrogen (H2) across a carbon–nitrogen double bond, forming amines or amine derivatives. Although a variety of general methods have been developed for the enantioselective hydrogenation of ketones, methods for the hydrogenation of carbon–nitrogen double bonds are less general. Hydrogenation of imines is complicated by both syn/anti isomerization and tautomerization to enamines, which may be hydrogenated with low enantioselectivity in the presence of a chiral catalyst. Additionally, the substituent attached to nitrogen affects both the reactivity and spatial properties of the imine, complicating the development of a general catalyst system for imine hydrogenation. Despite these challenges, methods have been developed that address particular substrate classes, such as N-aryl, N-alkyl, and endocyclic imines.
In organic chemistry, the Baylis–Hillman, Morita–Baylis–Hillman, or MBH reaction is a carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction between an activated alkene and a carbon electrophile in the presence of a nucleophilic catalyst, such as a tertiary amine or phosphine. The product is densely functionalized, joining the alkene at the α-position to a reduced form of the electrophile.
Hydrogen-bond catalysis is a type of organocatalysis that relies on use of hydrogen bonding interactions to accelerate and control organic reactions. In biological systems, hydrogen bonding plays a key role in many enzymatic reactions, both in orienting the substrate molecules and lowering barriers to reaction. The field is relatively undeveloped compared to research in Lewis acid catalysis.
Synergistic catalysis is a specialized approach to catalysis whereby at least two different catalysts act on two different substrates simultaneously to allow reaction between the two activated materials. While a catalyst works to lower the energy of reaction overall, a reaction using synergistic catalysts work together to increase the energy level of HOMO of one of the molecules and lower the LUMO of another. While this concept has come to be important in developing synthetic pathways, this strategy is commonly found in biological systems as well.
Photoredox catalysis is a branch of photochemistry that uses single-electron transfer. Photoredox catalysts are generally drawn from three classes of materials: transition-metal complexes, organic dyes, and semiconductors. While organic photoredox catalysts were dominant throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, soluble transition-metal complexes are more commonly used today.
Ugi’s amine is an organometallic compound with the formula (C5H5)Fe(C5H4CH N 2. It is named for the chemist who first reported its synthesis in 1970, Ivar Ugi. It is a ferrocene derivative. Ugi’s amine is a precursor to ligands, most notably, the Josiphos ligands, which have been used in asymmetric catalysis
The nitro-Mannich reaction is the nucleophilic addition of a nitroalkane to an imine, resulting in the formation of a beta-nitroamine. With the reaction involving the addition of an acidic carbon nucleophile to a carbon-heteroatom double bond, the nitro-Mannich reaction is related to some of the most fundamental carbon-carbon bond forming reactions in organic chemistry, including the aldol reaction, Henry reaction and Mannich reaction.
The ketimine Mannich reaction is an asymmetric synthetic technique using differences in starting material to push a Mannich reaction to create an enantiomeric product with steric and electronic effects, through the creation of a ketimine group. Typically, this is done with a reaction with proline or another nitrogen-containing heterocycle, which control chirality with that of the catalyst. This has been theorized to be caused by the restriction of undesired (E)-isomer by preventing the ketone from accessing non-reactive tautomers. Generally, a Mannich reaction is the combination of an amine, a ketone with a β-acidic proton and aldehyde to create a condensed product in a β-addition to the ketone. This occurs through an attack on the ketone with a suitable catalytic-amine unto its electron-starved carbon, from which an imine is created. This then undergoes electrophilic addition with a compound containing an acidic proton. It is theoretically possible for either of the carbonyl-containing molecules to create diastereomers, but with the addition of catalysts which restrict addition as of the enamine creation, it is possible to extract a single product with limited purification steps and in some cases as reported by List et al.; practical one-pot syntheses are possible. The process of selecting a carbonyl-group gives the reaction a direct versus indirect distinction, wherein the latter case represents pre-formed products restricting the reaction's pathway and the other does not. Ketimines selects a reaction group, and circumvent a requirement for indirect pathways.
The first squaramide catalyst developed. It functions as a bifunctional catalyst. [3] Some later catalysts are based on such a structure by removing the methylene group on the left to make a 3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl-group or adding a 6-methoxy group on the quinoline. [1]
Zlotin's bifunctional squaramide catalyst. [1]
