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Concept
Hydroboration
Summary
In organic chemistry, hydroboration refers to the addition of a hydrogen-boron bond to certain double and triple bonds involving carbon (, , , and ). This chemical reaction is useful in the organic synthesis of organic compounds.
Hydroboration produces organoborane compounds that react with a variety of reagents to produce useful compounds, such as alcohols, amines, or alkyl halides. The most widely known reaction of the organoboranes is oxidation to produce alcohols typically by hydrogen peroxide. This type of reaction has promoted research on hydroboration because of its mild condition and a wide scope of tolerated alkenes. Another research subtheme is metal-catalysed hydroboration.
The development of this technology and the underlying concepts were recognized by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Herbert C. Brown. He shared the prize with Georg Wittig in 1979 for his pioneering research on organoboranes as important synthetic intermediates. A complement to hydroboration is carboboration, where a carbon moiety is incorporated rather than hydrogen.
Hydroboration is typically anti-Markovnikov, i.e. the hydrogen adds to the most substituted carbon of the double bond. That the regiochemistry is reverse of a typical HX addition reflects the polarity of the Bδ+-Hδ− bonds. Hydroboration proceeds via a four-membered transition state: the hydrogen and the boron atoms added on the same face of the double bond. Granted that the mechanism is concerted, the formation of the C-B bond proceeds slightly faster than the formation of the C-H bond. As a result, in the transition state, boron develops a partially negative charge while the more substituted carbon bears a partially positive charge. This partial positive charge is better supported by the more substituted carbon. Formally, the reaction is an example of a group transfer reaction. However, an analysis of the orbitals involved reveals that the reaction is 'pseudopericyclic' and not subject to the Woodward–Hoffmann rules for pericyclic reactivity.
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