The first examples of the reactions of Fischer carbene complexeswith 1,3-butadiynes are reported. Thesereactions are of interest since they provide new methods for thesynthesis of acetylenic substituted arenes and alsofor the synthesis of biaryls. The reactions of the complexes(CO)
5Cr=C(OR
1)R
2[R
1 = Me,
n-Bu; R
2 =phenyl,1-naphthyl, 1-cyclohexenyl] were investigated with the conjugateddiynes R
3C
C-C
CR
3 [R
3 =
t-Bu,
i-Pr, Ph].All of the carbene complexes will react with 1 equiv of the diyneto give good yields of acetylenic arenes
5,
19,and
23, each with high selectivity for the regioisomer in whichthe substituent R
3 on the diyne is incorporatedadjacentto the phenol function. The reactions of the alkynylarenes
5,
19, and
23 with a second equivalentof carbene complexes,
4,
16, and
22, respectively, generatethe bis-phenols
26,
31, and
33, withvarying amounts of five-membered-ringannulated compounds as side products. These side products are notseen with the cyclohexenyl complex
22 and canbe minimized to some extent for the phenyl complex
4a byproper control of the concentration and the temperature.Attempts to carry out benzannulations of both of the acetylenicfunctions in the 1,3-diyne concurrently by employing2 equiv of the carbene complex were not successful, and this issuspected to be due to the presence of a chromiumtricarbonyl group on the newly formed arene ring after the firstbenzannulation, such as in complex
34. Theconcurrentdouble benzannulation of a diyne can be achieved in an intramolecularfashion with the bis-carbene complex
39.The intramolecular process leads to a reversal in theregiochemistry of the second benzannulation producing the
C2-symmetrical 2,2'-binaphthol
40from the reaction of complex
39 with the diyne
8along with the indenylnaphthalene
41. The reaction of the optically pure bis-carbenecomplex
44 derived from(2
R,3
R)-butane-2,3-diol with diyne
8gives a single diastereomer of the 2,2'-binaphthol
46.Chemical correlation with the known 2,2'-binaphthol
51revealsthat the biaryl axis in
46 has an
S-configuration, which was predicted from an examination ofmodels.