Latest ArticlesOxygen ligation is envisioned to provide a stable and distinctive coordination environment to the strongly oxophilic rare-earth metals. However, the well-defined dialkyl complexes bearing oxyanion ancillary ligand had been rarely addressed for the instability of the complexes and the shortage of easily available ligands. Herein, we report the synthesis of phosphate ligated dialkyl yttrium complexes (PYR2) featuring a high stability and a tunable ligand. Treated with the borate reagent, the phosphate yttrium complex displays high activity and selectivity in the catalytic cis-1, 4-polymerization of isoprene (up to 96.5%). Furthermore, using AlMe3 as an additive, the stereoselectivity switches to trans-1, 4-polymerization (up to 92.0%).
The Beckmann rearrangement has been predominantly studied for the synthesis of amide and lactam. By strategically using the in situ generated Appel's salt or Mitsunobu's zwitterionic adduct as the dehydrating agent, a series of Beckmann rearrangement and following cascade reactions have been developed herein. The protocol allows the conversion of various ketoximes into amide, thioamide, tetrazole and imide products in modular procedures. The generality and tolerance of functionalities of this method have been demonstrated.
The first intermolecular electrophilic dearomatization of halonaphthols with benzyl/allyl bromides is described. Halonaphthols are used as carbon-nucleophiles in dearomatization to form three-dimensional cyclic enones with excellent chemoselectivity, in which etherification of phenolic hydroxyl group could be restrained well by using cesium carbonate as the base. A wide range of cyclic enones is directly prepared from various substituted benzyl/allyl bromides and halonaphthols. Mechanistic investigations suggest a direct SN2 reaction pathway.
A novel class of chiral spiro-fused bisoxazoline ligands possessing a deep chiral pocket was prepared. The developed ligands have been employed in the nickel-catalyzed highly enantioselective Michael-type Friedel-Crafts reaction, affording the products bearing a trifluoromethylated all-carbon quaternary stereocenter with moderate to excellent yields (up to 99%) and good to excellent enantioselectivies (up to > 99.9% ee). Moreover, a proposed model of chiral pocket revealed that the attack of indole from the Re-face of β-CF3-β-disubstituted nitroalkene was favorable.
The tandem reaction of photoinduced double hydrogen-atom transfer and deoxygenative transborylation for chemo- and site-selective reduction of nitroarenes into aryl amines under catalyst-free, room temperature conditions was disclosed in excellent yields. In this reaction, isopropanol (iPrOH) was used as hydrogen donor and tetrahydroxydiboron [B2(OH)4] as deoxygenative reagent with green, cheap, and commercially available credentials. In particular, a wide range of reducible functional groups such as halogen (-Cl, -Br and even -I), alkenyl, alkynyl, aldehyde, ketone, carboxyl, and cyano are all tolerated. Moreover, the reaction preferentially reduces the nitro group at the electron-deficient site over another nitro group in the same molecule. A detailed mechanistic investigation in combination of experiments and theoretical calculations gave a reasonable explanation for the reaction pathway.
We report the convenient synthesis of a benzobis(imidazolium)-embedded conjugated polyelectrolyte pBBI by a Cu-catalyzed direct C‒H arylation of a cationic benzobis(imidazolium) monomer with a diiodide comonomer. pBBI shows weak fluorescence in solution due to rotation of the repeat units in the conjugated backbone, and enhanced fluorescence when electrostatically interacting with a variety of anions to form aggregates. Specially, pBBI responds to the bisulfite anion with intensified unique deep-blue fluorescence easily discriminated by naked eye.
An efficient chlorination reaction of in situ generated (β-diazo-α, α-difluoroethyl)phosphonates has been achieved with hydrochloric acid as a chlorine source under mild and operationally convenient conditions. The reaction does not need any catalyst and tolerates a wide scope of substrates, which affords the (β-chlorodifluoroethyl)phosphonate products in good to excellent yields. This reaction represents the first example of the halogenation of difluoroalkyl diazo compounds, and also provides an easy way for the synthesis of difluoromethylenephosphonate-containing compounds.
The first total synthesis of dracaenins A and B is achieved in four steps. The synthesis features the convergent coupling of three readily available fragments with minimized use of protecting groups. The chemical synthesis enables the discovery of their activity in stimulating platelet aggregation, and thus, sheds light on the possible origin of the hemostatic effect of dragon's blood.
The asymmetric carbenoid CH insertion of 3-diazooxindoles into 1, 4-cyclohexadiene has been accomplished in the presence of chiral bis(imidazoline) NCN pincer iridium(Ⅲ) complexes as the catalysts. With a catalyst loading of 0.5 mol%, the reactions proceeded smoothly at 0 ℃ to afford a variety of chiral 3-substituted oxindoles in good yields with moderate to excellent enantioselectivities (up to 99% ee). The protocol exhibits good functional group tolerance with respect to 3-diazooxindoles and is readily scaled up to 2 mmol scale without any loss in activity and enantioselectivity. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been performed to better understand the reaction mechanism and to explain the stereochemical outcome of the reactions.
Perylene derivative with circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) at aggregated state was seldom reported due to the strong ACQ (aggregation-caused quench) effect at aggregation. In this work, a novel cholesterol-tetraphenylethylene-perylene derivative (TPE-P) was designed and synthesized in moderate yield. It exhibited liquid crystalline behavior with orderly hexagonal columnar mesophase and good fluorescence emission at long wavelength (600-700 nm) not only in solution but also at aggregated states based on the AIE (aggregation-induced emission)-FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) effect between tetraphenylethylene unit and perylene moiety. Moreover, the circular dichroism (CD) and CPL studies suggested the effective chiral transfer from cholesterol unit to tetraphenylethylene unit and perylene skeleton due to the spiral liquid crystalline self-assembly. The CD and CPL signals showed the order of THF < THF-hexane < solid film < meosphase, indicating that the higher spiral orderly degree resulted in the stronger chiral transfer. The largest |glum| value for mesophase excited at 320 nm was as high as 1.5×10−2 based on the combining effect of AIE-FRET and chiral transfer. This research not only reported a novel CPL perylene derivative at aggregated state, but also confirmed that the combination of AIE-FRET effect and chiral transfer of liquid crytalline phase was an effective method to construct normal dye with excellent CPL property in aggregated state.