The syntheses and properties of novel, extremely strong uncharged polyaminophosphazene bases up to a high level of steric hindrance are described. Most of the systems were readily prepared in up to molar quantities and conveniently recovered from their salts. They are of appreciable to high chemical and thermal stability. Crystal structures of their salts were determined in order to parametrize a force field, which is utilized in molecular modeling studies. The latter offer a rationalization of the high conformational mobility of these systems. These bases cover a range of ca. 15 pK units in basicity and extend the range of uncharged auxiliary bases by ca. 19 pK units up to DMsopKsH+ values of 34-35. They are proposed as a novel class of auxiliary bases for deprotonation of very low acidic compounds where chemists have been so far left to classical metalorganic bases. Depending on the basicity range and the degree of steric protection of the basic center, these systems are particularly applicable to E2 elimination or to in situ generation of highly reactive "naked" anions.Uncharged nitrogen bases have a long tradition as widely used and often irreplaceable standard reagents in organic synthesis; many attempts to improve basicity and to reduce nucleophilicity have been reported"] since the classical work of Hunig et a1.L21. Until recently, amidines and guanidines as described by Eiter et al.f31, Eschenmoser et al.f4I, and Barton et al. ['] were generally considered the strongest synthetically useful auxiliary bases. In the early sixties there was a single report by Flynn et a1.L8] concerning applications of a somewhat stronger isobiguanide base. This base was even commercially available, but surprisingly has not been accepted by synthetic chemists.In connection with our own activities in this field we exploited among other s t r u~t u r e s [~~'~] the structural type of peralkylated triaminoiminophosphoranes. The simplest representative 1 was already known" l] and in our hands turned out to be of unprecedented base strength among kinetically active uncharged bases. The derivatives of this leading structure we synthesized s~bsequently['~,'~] proved to be chemically very stable, highly versatile and easy to recover auxiliary bases with a very broad range of steric shielding of the basic enter[',^*'^]. The Concept of Phosphazene BasesAt the outset there was the question, whether it would be possible to further enhance basicity by the same formal "homologization" which converts weakly basic tertiary amines to strongly basic triaminoiminophosphoranes.

The synthesis and properties of a number of very strong iminophosphorane bases up to an extremely high level of steric hindrance are described. They cover a range of ca. 4 pK units in basicity and a range of more than 11 orders of magnitude in their rates of methylation with methyl iodide. Most of the systems are readily prepared in up to molar quantities, conveniently recovered from their salts and are of high chemical and thermal stability. Crystal structures were determined in ~~ order to parametrize a force field, which is utilized in molecular modeling studies offering a rationalization of the observed differences in steric hindrance and basicity. Depending on the degree of steric protection of the basic center, these novel bases are proposed as unprecedented, versatile auxiliary bases in E2 eliminations and in reactions involving deprotonation in the presence of more or less strong electrophiles.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.