- Phosphazene
A phosphazene is any of a class of
chemical compound s in which aphosphorus atom is covalently linked to anitrogen atom by adouble bond and to three other atoms or radicals by single bonds. Two examples arehexachlorocyclotriphosphazene andbis(triphenylphosphine)iminium chloride .The corresponding
polymer s arepolyphosphazene s.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.Two commercially available phosphazene bases are BEMP with an acetonitrile
pKa of theconjugate acid of 27.6 and the phosphorimidic triamide t-Bu-P4 (pKBH+ = 42.7) also known as Schwesinger base after one of its inventors ["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] .In one application t-Bu-P4 is employed in a
nucleophilic addition converting thepival aldehyde to thealcohol ["Phosphazene base-promoted functionalization of aryltrimethylsilanes" Koichi Suzawa, Masahiro Ueno, Andrew E. H. Wheatley and Yoshinori KondoChem. Commun. , 2006, 4850 - 4852, DOI| 10.1039/b611090h] :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.External links
* Phosphazene bases [http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/Area_of_Interest/Chemistry/Chemical_Synthesis/Product_Highlights/Phosphazenes.html Link]
References
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