The Stabilizing Effect of Pre-Equilibria: A Trifluoromethyl Complex as CF2 Reservoir in Catalytic Olefin Difluorocarbenation

21 December 2020, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

A new, efficient, catalytic difluorocarbenation of olefins to give 1,1-difluorocyclopropanes is presented. The catalyst, an organobismuth complex, uses TMSCF3 as a stoichiometric difluorocarbene source. We demonstrate both the viability and robustness of this reaction over a wide range of alkenes and alkynes, including electron-poor alkenes, to generate the corresponding 1,1-difluorocyclopropanes and 1,1-difluorocyclopropenes. Ease of catalyst recovery from the reaction mixture is another attractive feature of this method. In depth experimental and theoretical studies showed that the key difluorocarbene-generating step proceeds through a bismuth non-redox synchronous mechanism generating a highly reactive free CF2 in an endergonic pre-equilibrium. It is the reversibility when generating the difluorocarbene that accounts for the high selectivity, while minimizing CF2-recombination side-reactions.

Keywords

organofluorination
difluorocarbene
main-group catalysis
hypervalent organobismuth
difluorocyclopropanation

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
Hyvl BiCF3 SI
Description
Actions

Supplementary weblinks

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.