Carbon-carbon bond formation based on alkenylphosphonates

We have been engaged in the development of asymmetric conjugate addition reactions of lithium thiolates, organolithiums and organocopper reagents under the control of external chiral ligands and we have also developed an efficient asymmetric Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons (14WE) reaction using an external chiral Ligand. We attempted to synthesize axial chiral allenes by combination of these conjugate addition reaction and HWE reaction. In the course of this study, we found that Michael-aldol reaction of alkenylphosphonates 1 using LDA and aldehydes results in the direct formation of alpha,beta -unsaturated hydroxyphosphonate 4, which was efficiently converted to allene by treatment with KH or KH-18-crown-6. Furthermore, allenes were synthesized by sequential double HWE reaction in one-flask manner starting from methylenebisphosphonate 8. The key to success is a metal exchange of intermediate lithium alkoxide 4-Li to potassium alkoxide 4-K by the addition of t-BuOK. As our continuous study of carbon-carbon bond formation based on alkenylphosphonates, a cyclization reaction of bisalkenylphosphonate 6 was developed. Although the treatment of 6 with organolithium reagents afforded a mixture of addition-cyclization product 9 and deprotonation-cyclization product 10, the treatment of 6 with LDA gave 10 selectively. These cyclization methods were applied to the synthesis of efficient chiral phosphine ligands.