Investigations on Aromatic Amino‐Claisen Rearrangements
The thermal and acid catalysed rearrangement of p‐substituted N‐(1′,1′‐dimethylallyl)anilines (p‐substituent=H (5), CH3 (6), iso‐C3H7 (7), Cl (8), OCH3 (9), CN (10)), of N‐(1′,1′‐dimethylallyl)‐2,6‐dimethylaniline (11), of o‐substituted N‐(1′‐methylallyl)anilines (o‐substituent=H (12), CH3 (13), t‐C4H9 (14), of (E)‐ and (Z)‐N‐(2′‐butenyl)aniline ((E)‐ and (Z)‐16), of N‐(3′‐methyl‐2′‐butenylaniline (17) and of N‐allyl‐(1) and N‐allyl‐N‐methylaniline (15) was investigated (cf. Scheme 3). The thermal transformations were normally conducted in 3‐methyl‐2‐butanol (MBO), the acid catalysed rearrangements in 2N‐0,1N sulfuric acid. ‐ Thermal rearrangements. The N‐(1′,1′‐dimethylallyl)anilines rearrange in MBO at 200‐260° with the exception of the p‐cyano compound 10 in a clean reaction to give the corresponding 2‐(3′‐methyl‐2′‐butenyl)anilines 22–26 (Table 2 and 3). The amount of splitting into the anilines is <4% (10 gives ≃ 40% splitting). The secondary kinetic deuterium isotope effect (SKIDI) of the rearrangement of 5 and its 2′,3′,3′‐d3‐isomer 5 amounts to 0.89±0.09 at 260° (Table 4). This indicates that the partial formation of the new s̀‐bond C(2), C(3′) occurs already in the transition state, as is known from other established [3,3]‐sigmatropic rearrangements. The rearrangement of the N‐(1′‐methylallyl)anilines 12–14 in MBO takes place at 290–310° to give (E)/(Z)‐mixtures of the corresponding 2‐(2′‐Butenyl)anilines ((E)‐ and (Z)‐30,‐31, and ‐32) besides the parent anilines (5–23%). Since a dependence is observed between the (E)/(Z)‐ratio and the bulkiness of the o‐substituent (H: (E)‐30/(Z)‐30=4,9; t‐C4H9: (E)‐32/(Z)‐32=35.5; cf. Table 6), it can be concluded, that the thermal amino‐Claisen rearrangement occurs preferentially via a chair‐like transition state (Scheme 22). Methyl substitution at C(3′) in the allyl chain hinders the thermal amino‐Claisen‐rearrangement almost completely, since heating of (E)‐and (Z)‐16, in MBO at 335° leads to the formation of the expected 2‐(1′‐methyl‐allyl) aniline (33) to an extent of only 12 and 5%, respectively (Scheme 9). The main reaction (≃60%) represents the splitting into aniline. This is the only observable reaction in the case of 17. The inversion of the allyl chain in 16 ‐ (E)‐ and (Z)‐30 cannot be detected ‐ indicated that 33 is also formed in a [3, 3]‐sigmatropic process. This is also true for the thermal transformation of N‐allyl‐(1) and N‐allyl‐N‐methylaniline (15) into 2 and 34, respectively, since the thermal rearrangement of 2′, 3′, 3′‐d3‐1 yields 1′, 1′, 2′‐d3‐2 exclusively (Table 8). These reaction are accompanied to an appreciable extent by homolysis of the N, C (1′) bond: compound 1 yields up to 40% of aniline and 15 even 60% of N‐methylaniline ((Scheme 10 and 11). The activation parameters were determined for the thermal rearrangements of 1, 5, 12 and 15 in MBO (Table 22). All rearrangements show little solvent dependence (Table 5, 7 and 9). The observed ΔH≠ values are in the range of 34‐40 kcal/mol and ...