Revealing the Iron-Catalyzed β-Methyl Scission of <i>tert</i>-Butoxyl Radicals via the Mechanistic Studies of Carboazidation of Alkenes
Mong-Feng Chiou,
Haigen Xiong,
Yajun Li,
Hongli Bao,
Xinhao Zhang
Affiliations
Mong-Feng Chiou
Key Laboratory of Coal to Ethylene Glycol and Its Related Technology, State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Center for Excellence in Molecular Synthesis, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 155 Yangqiao Road West, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China
Haigen Xiong
Key Laboratory of Coal to Ethylene Glycol and Its Related Technology, State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Center for Excellence in Molecular Synthesis, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 155 Yangqiao Road West, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China
Yajun Li
Key Laboratory of Coal to Ethylene Glycol and Its Related Technology, State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Center for Excellence in Molecular Synthesis, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 155 Yangqiao Road West, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China
Hongli Bao
Key Laboratory of Coal to Ethylene Glycol and Its Related Technology, State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Center for Excellence in Molecular Synthesis, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 155 Yangqiao Road West, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China
Xinhao Zhang
Lab of Computational Chemistry and Drug Design, Key Laboratory of Chemical Genomics, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China
We describe here a mechanistic study of the iron-catalyzed carboazidation of alkenes involving an intriguing metal-assisted β-methyl scission process. Although t-BuO radical has frequently been observed in experiments, the β-methyl scission from a t-BuO radical into a methyl radical and acetone is still broadly believed to be thermodynamically spontaneous and difficult to control. An iron-catalyzed β-methyl scission of t-BuO is investigated in this work. Compared to a free t-BuO radical, the coordination at the iron atom reduces the activation energy for the scission from 9.3 to 3.9 ~ 5.2 kcal/mol. The low activation energy makes the iron-catalyzed β-methyl scission of t-BuO radicals almost an incomparably facile process and explains the selective formation of methyl radicals at low temperature in the presence of some iron catalysts. In addition, a radical relay process and an outer-sphere radical azidation process in the iron-catalyzed carboazidation of alkenes are suggested by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.
