Carbon-carbon coupling of 4,6-dinitrobenzofuroxan with 3-aminothiophenes: a kinetic and structural study
Potentiometric measurements carried out in a 50-50 (v/v) H2O-Me2SO mixture together with 1H and 13C NMR studies carried out in pure Me2SO-d6 reveal that 3-aminothiophene (4a), 3-N-(methylamino)thiophene (4b), and 3-N,N-dimethylaminothiophene (4c) undergo protonation exclusively at the amino groups in dilute acid solutions. The pKa values of 4a, 4b, and 4c are equal to 3.38, 3.65, and 3.53, respectively, at 25°C, comparing well with those for related anilines in the same aqueous Me2SO mixtures. However, despite this similarity of the nitrogen basicities, compounds 4a, 4b, and 4c are found to behave differently from anilines upon treatment with super-electrophilic 4,6-dinitrobenzofuroxan (DNBF). While anilines react to give first an N-bonded sigma -adduct that subsequently decomposes to afford the thermodynamically more stable C-bonded adduct, the 3-aminothiophenes react only as carbon nucleophiles, giving rise directly to the corresponding C-adducts. Based on 1H and 13C NMR data as well as measurements of the rate constants (k1DNBF) for DNBF addition to 4a, 4b, and 4c, it is demonstrated that 3-aminothiophenes possess such high negative charge density at C-2 that they can be regarded as strongly enaminic in nature. Estimates of the pKa values for protonation at C-2 of 4a, 4b, and 4c could be made: pKa4a approx -0.4; pKa4b approx 0.2; pKa4c approx 0.8. Thus, these compounds are more susceptible to electrophilic addition at this position than most of the five-membered ring heterocycles studied so far. Altogether, the results demonstrate the importance of the hyper-ortho relationship in the thiophene systems, accounting for the ease of both electrophilic and nucleophilic reactivity of 3-X-thiophenes in σ -complex formation processes.Key words: aminothiophenes, enamines, superelectrophiles, dinitrobenzofuroxan, hyper-ortho relationship.