Evidence that Additions of Grignard Reagents to Aliphatic Aldehydes Do Not Involve Single-Electron-Transfer Processes.

Addition of allylmagnesium reagents to an aliphatic aldehyde bearing a radical clock gave only addition products and no evidence of ring-opened products that would suggest single-electron-transfer reactions. The analogous Barbier reaction also did not provide evidence for a single-electron-transfer mechanism in the addition step. Other Grignard reagents (methyl-, vinyl-, t-Bu-, and triphenylmethylmagnesium halides) also do not appear to add to an alkyl aldehyde by a single-electron-transfer mechanism.

Influence of alkoxy groups on rates of acetal hydrolysis and tosylate solvolysis: electrostatic stabilization of developing oxocarbenium ion intermediates and neighboring-group participation to form oxonium ions.

The hydrolysis of 4-alkoxy-substituted acetals was accelerated by about 20-fold compared to that of sterically comparable substrates that do not have an alkoxy group. Rate accelerations are largest when the two functional groups are linked by a flexible cyclic tether. When controlled for the inductive destabilization, an alkoxy group can accelerate acetal hydrolysis by up to 200-fold. The difference in rates of acetal hydrolysis between a substrate where the alkoxy group was tethered to the acetal group by a five-membered ring compared to one where it was tethered by an eight-membered ring was less than 100-fold, suggesting that fused-ring intermediates were not formed. By comparison, the difference in rates of solvolysis of structurally related tosylates were nearly 10(6)-fold between the five- and eight-membered ring series. This observation implicates neighboring-group participation in the solvolysis of tosylates but not in the hydrolysis of acetals. The acceleration of acetal hydrolysis by an alkoxy group is better explained by electrostatic stabilization of intermediates that accumulate positive charge at the acetal carbon atom.

Acceleration of acetal hydrolysis by remote alkoxy groups: evidence for electrostatic effects on the formation of oxocarbenium ions.

In contrast to observations with carbohydrates, experiments with 4-alkoxy-substituted acetals indicate that an alkoxy group can accelerate acetal hydrolysis by up to 20-fold compared to substrates without an alkoxy group. The acceleration of ionization in more flexible acetals can be up to 200-fold when compensated for inductive effects.

13C NMR spectroscopy for the quantitative determination of compound ratios and polymer end groups.

(13)C NMR spectroscopic integration employing short relaxation delays was evaluated as a quantitative tool to obtain ratios of diastereomers, regioisomers, constitutional isomers, mixtures of unrelated compounds, peptoids, and sugars. The results were compared to established quantitative methods such as (1)H NMR spectroscopic integration, gas chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography and were found to be within <3.4% of (1)H NMR spectroscopic values (most examples give results within <2%). Acquisition of the spectra took 2-30 min on as little as 10 mg of sample, proving the general utility of the technique. The simple protocol was extended to include end group analysis of low molecular weight polymers, which afforded results in accordance with (1)H NMR spectroscopy and matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight spectrometry.

Single-molecule imaging of platinum ligand exchange reaction reveals reactivity distribution.

Single-molecule fluorescence microscopy provided information about the real-time distribution of chemical reactivity on silicon oxide supports at the solution-surface interface, at a level of detail which would be unavailable from a traditional ensemble technique or from a technique that imaged the static physical properties of the surface. Chemical reactions on the surface were found to be uncorrelated; that is, the chemical reaction of one metal complex did not influence the location of a future chemical reaction of another metal complex.