Alkynyl Fischer carbene complex as a traceless directing group for the regioselective cycloaddition of dithiolethiones to arylacetylene: synthesis of E-dithiafulvene thione and dithioesters

A phenylethynyl Fischer carbene complex was used as a traceless directing group for the regioselective cycloaddition of dithiolethiones to arylacetylene, which constitutes the first synthesis of E-dithiafulvene thione or dithioesters.     

Facile microwave-assisted synthesis of cyclic amidinium salts

The cyclization of N,N'-dialkyl or diaryl ethane-1,2-diamines or propane-1,3-diamines with inorganic ammonium salts and orthoesters proceeds briskly under microwave irradiation to afford the corresponding imidazolinium or tetrahydropyrimidinium salts. The transformation is highly versatile and tolerates a wide range of substituents and counterions. It could be scaled from 1 to 50 mmol without any difficulty. Because the workup is equally rapid and straightforward, this experimental procedure provides fast and convenient access to an important class of heterocyclic compounds that have found numerous applications as N-heterocyclic carbene precursors, organocatalysts, and ionic liquids.     

Wavelet neural networks to resolve the overlapping signal in the voltammetric determination of phenolic compounds

Three phenolic compounds, i.e. phenol, catechol and 4-acetamidophenol, were simultaneously determined by voltammetric detection of its oxidation reaction at the surface of an epoxy-graphite transducer. Because of strong signal overlapping, Wavelet Neural Networks (WNN) were used in data treatment, in a combination of chemometrics and electrochemical sensors, already known as the electronic tongue concept. To facilitate calibration, a set of samples (concentration of each phenol ranging from 0.25 to 2.5mM) was prepared automatically by employing a Sequential Injection System. Phenolic compounds could be resolved with good prediction ability, showing correlation coefficients greater than 0.929 when the obtained values were compared with those expected for a set of samples not employed for training.     

Cycloaddition across the benzofuran ring as an approach to the morphine alkaloids

The intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction of several amidofurans tethered onto a benzofuran ring was examined as a strategy for the synthesis of morphine. Bromo substitution on the furan ring did not provide sufficient activation to allow the cycloaddition to take place across the aromatic benzofuran. However, the presence of a large o-methylbenzyl group on the amido nitrogen atom causes the reactive s-trans conformation of the amidofuran to be highly populated, thereby facilitating its Diels-Alder cycloaddition across a tethered benzofuran.     

Effect of axial anthracene ligands on the luminescence of trinickel molecular wires

Two nickel compounds having extended metal atom chains (EMACs) with the Ni₃(dpa)₄L₂ core, where dpa is the anion of 2,2′-dipyridylamine and L represents an anthracene derivative, have been synthesized in good yield and excellent purity by reaction of Ni₃(dpa)₄Cl₂ and the respective anthracene derivatives. For the compound Ni₃(dpa)₄(AnCC)₂ (1) AnCC is the anion of 9-ethynylanthracene and for Ni₃(dpa)₄(AnCOO)₂ (2) AnCOO is anthracene-9-carboxylate. The two compounds have been characterized by X-ray crystallography and other techniques. The cyclovoltammograms (CVs) of 1 and 2 display reversible redox processes at E_1/2 = 0.911 V and 1.020 V, respectively (vs. Ag/AgCl). The magnetic data suggest that the terminal Ni atoms are in a high spin state while the central Ni atom is diamagnetic, in agreement with other trinickel molecular wires. Although compound 1 is strongly luminescent, and represents the first such example in an EMAC, 2 does not display luminescence. The strong emission in 1 is related to donor–acceptor interactions between the Ni?Ni?Ni wire, the triply bonded CC linking unit, and the conjugated aromatic anthracene derivative, a process that is unavailable for 2 because the carboxylate group is almost perpendicular to the anthracene moiety.     

Ab initio structures for 90 degrees -twisted s-trans-1,3-butadiene and cyclooctatetraene: the naked sp2-sp2 bond

The bond length of a carbon-carbon sp2-sp2 sigma-bond without the perturbing effects of pi-interactions has been estimated by high level calculations on two prototypical systems: a 90 degrees -twisted form of butadiene and the tub conformer of cyclooctatetraene. The former system yields a value of 1.4818 A, considerably longer than previous estimates. The corresponding bond length in the latter is slightly shorter due to some pi-electron delocalization.     

Determination of the dihedral angle of the monoanion of succinic acid in aprotic media

A value of 74(+/-4) degrees was determined from NMR-observed dipolar couplings for the rotational dihedral angle of the monosuccinate anion in an aprotic liquid-crystal solution of the gauche conformation of tetraoctylammonium monosuccinate. This value is in reasonable agreement with other, somewhat less definitive, evidence gleaned from isotropic vicinal proton-proton couplings of the essentially completely gauche preference of the monosuccinate anion in tert-butyl alcohol and aprotic solvents, such as DMSO and THF, and quantum computations for the monoanion in THF.