6/9/2012 - Alkene Halohydration

Sorry for the lack of posts recently as physiotherapy has taken over my life lately and it has exhausted me to the point of falling asleep super early (unlike me).  But I thought I would continue in doing a couple basic organic reactions.  This reaction is the conversion of an alkene into a halohydrated alkane, where there is both an alcohol group and a halogen added to the carbons.  The reactants in this reaction are simply a diatomic halogen (F₂, Cl₂, Br₂, I₂) along with water which also works as the solvent.  This results in the alcohol adding to the most substituted carbon with the halogen adding to the other carbon, both anti configuration to one another.

1/25/2012 - Activation and Functionalization of a Linear Alkane through Tungsten Complex

    Here is another reaction involving the activation of a carbon hydrogen bond where after the activation the alkane can be functionalized through the addition of iodine into the system under liquid nitrogen.  The study was performed out of my home department of chemistry at the University of British Columbia done by Peter Legzdins, Jenkins Y.K. Tsang, and Miriam S.A. Buschhaus in 2007.  The tungsten complex was particularly a tungsten allyl nitrosyl complex, which allows the linear ƞ3 alkane to be attacked by the I2 in creating the selective alkyl halide at the terminal position (1-iodopentane here specifically).

Image: From source
Source: J. AM. CHEM. SOC. 2007, 129, 5372-5373

1/24/2012 - Oxidative Addition of the Carbon-Hydrogen Bonds of Neopentane to a Iridium(I) Complex

   In this organometallic reaction we are presented with a carbon hydrogen bond activation where the bond is cleaved.  These reactions are very important in modern chemistry as it is able to turn very cheap organic molecules into functionally expensive organic molecules.  In this reaction in particular, developed in 1982 by J.K Hoyano and W.A.G Graham out of the University of Alberta, it harnesses photochemical energy to cause an Iridium (I) organometallic complex to take up the neopentane molecule and to strip a hydrogen from the alkane.  The resulting complex contains the same number of metal carbon bonds, as there is a CO group leaving during the reaction, but there is a new Metal hydrogen bond created as the activation.

Image: Taken from source below
Source: J.K Hoyano, W.A.G Graham. J. Am. Chem. SOC. 1982, 104, 3123-3125