Hypervalent Iodine Reagents in Metal-Free Arylations and Vinylations : Investigation of Suitable Coupling Partners and Synthesis of New Reagents

This thesis concerns the development of metal-free reactions to obtain carbon-heteroatom and carbon-carbon bonds. This is achieved by transferring carbon ligands from hypervalent iodine reagents to suitable nucleophiles. The bulk of the work presented herein concerns arylation of oxygen and nitrogen nucleophiles, using the well-known diaryliodonium salts as aryl sources. In the first project, O-arylation of the oxime ethyl acetohydroxamate was studied. It was found that electron-poor as well as electron-rich aryl moieties could be transferred successfully to this nucleophile. Furthermore, the protocol could be extended to a sequential one-pot synthesis of benzo[b]furans. This method allowed for a fast synthesis of the natural product stemofuran A and formal syntheses of other natural products. In a successive project, O-arylation of hydroxide and aliphatic alkoxides was investigated. It is known that electron-poor aryl moieties can be transferred to these nucleophiles in moderate to high yields. However, combined with more electron-rich diaryliodonium salts, a large amount of side products were formed. These were suppressed upon addition of aryne traps, suggesting that aryne pathways are competing with the desired ligand coupling. It was also observed that secondary alcohols were oxidized to the corresponding ketones. The mechanism for this oxidation was investigated and aryne pathways could be excluded. Instead we suggest that the carbinol hydrogen gets deprotonated via an internal mechanism, after the alkoxide has coordinated to the iodonium salt. Highly sterically congested alkyl aryl ethers could be obtained in high yields by combining tertiary alcohols with ortho-blocked diaryliodonium salts. Next, N-arylation of secondary acyclic amides was studied using acetanilide as the model substrate. This procedure was suitable for transfer of electron-poor as well as ortho-substituted aryl moieties, but attempts to transfer very electron-rich aryl groups were unsuccessful. On the other hand, the amides displayed a complementary reactivity, allowing phenylation of electron-rich amides. In the final project, a one-pot synthesis of the cyclic iodonium reagent vinylbenziodoxolone is presented. These compounds have not been explored as reagents earlier. Initial screenings showed that the vinyl moiety could be transferred to nitrocyclohexane with opposite regioselectivity compared to the acyclic analogue of the reagent.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript.