Stability of Medium-Ring Cyclic Unsaturated Carbonyl Compounds: Direct Access to Unsaturated Ketones with C-C Double Bonds at Distal Positions via Transfer Dehydrogenation of Alicyclic Ketones

Medium-ring cyclic compounds have characteristic distortions. For alicyclic enones, conjugated enones are known to be less stable than unconjugated enones. In this study, the relative stability of cycloalkenones with varied C-C double bond positions with C6-C12 rings was theoretically investigated to reveal that C8-C12 cycloalkenones prefer the unconjugated isomer. Furthermore, direct access to distal unsaturated cycloalkenones has been accomplished by transfer dehydrogenation of cycloalkanones catalyzed by iridium complexes.

Heterolytic Oxidative Addition of sp2 and sp3 C-H Bonds by Metal-Ligand Cooperation with an Electron-Deficient Cyclopentadienone Iridium Complex

Oxidative addition reactions of C-H bonds that generate metal-carbon-bond-containing reactive intermediates have played essential roles in the field of organometallic chemistry. Herein, we prepared a cyclopentadienone iridium(I) complex 1 designed for oxidative C-H bond additions. The complex cleaves the various sp² and sp³ C-H bonds including those in hexane and methane as inferred from their H/D exchange reactions. The hydroxycyclopentadienyl(nitromethyl)iridium(III) complex 2 was formed when the complex was treated with nitromethane, which highlights this elementary metal-ligand cooperative C-H bond oxidative addition reaction. Mechanistic investigations suggested the C-H bond cleavage is mediated by polar functional groups in substrates or another iridium complex. We found that ligands that are more electron-deficient lead to more favorable reactions, in sharp contrast to classical metal-centered oxidative additions. This trend is in good agreement with the proposed mechanism, in which C-H bond cleavage is accompanied by two-electron transfer from the metal center to the cyclopentadienone ligand. The complex was further applied to catalytic transfer-dehydrogenation of tetrahydrofuran (THF).