Phosphazene

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A phosphazene is any of a class of chemical compounds in which a phosphorus atom is covalently linked to a nitrogen atom by a double bond and to three other atoms or radicals by single bonds. Two examples are hexachlorocyclotriphosphazene and bis(triphenylphosphine)iminium chloride.

The corresponding polymers are polyphosphazenes.

[edit] Phosphazene bases

Phosphazene bases are strong non-metallic non-ionic and low-nucleophilic bases. They are stronger bases than regular amine or amidine bases such as Hünig's base or DBU. Protonation takes place at a doubly bonded nitrogen atom.

Phosphazene Base

Two commercially available phosphazene bases are BEMP with an acetonitrile pKa of the conjugate acid of 27.6 and the phosphorimidic triamide t-Bu-P4 (pKBH+ = 42.7) also known as Schwesinger base after one of its inventors[1].

In one application t-Bu-P4 is employed in a nucleophilic addition converting the pival aldehyde to the alcohol[2] :

Phosphazene Base application

The active nucleophile is believed to be a highly reactive phosphazenium species with full negative charge on the arene sp2 carbon.

The related proazaphosphatrane superbases have a saturated P(NR)3 structure and protonation takes place at phosphorus.

[edit] External links

  • Phosphazene bases Link


[edit] References

  1. ^ Peralkylated Polyaminophosphazenes - Extremely Strong, Neutral Nitrogen Bases Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English Volume 26, Issue 11, Date: November 1987, Pages: 1167-1169 Reinhard Schwesinger, Helmut Schlemper doi:10.1002/anie.198711671
  2. ^ Phosphazene base-promoted functionalization of aryltrimethylsilanes Koichi Suzawa, Masahiro Ueno, Andrew E. H. Wheatley and Yoshinori Kondo Chem. Commun., 2006, 4850 - 4852, doi:10.1039/b611090h
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