Introducing Water and Deep Eutectic Solvents in Organosodium Chemistry: Chemoselective Nucleophilic Functionalizations in Air

Advancing the development of perfecting the use of polar organometallics in bio-inspired solvents, we report on the effective generation in batch of organosodium compounds, by the oxidative addition of a C–Cl bond to sodium, a halogen/sodium exchange, or by direct sodiation, when using sodium bricks or neopentylsodium in hexane as sodium sources. C(sp3)-, C(sp2)-, and C(sp)-hybridized alkyl and (hetero)aryl sodiated species have been chemoselectively trapped (in competition with protonolysis), with a variety of electrophiles when working “on water”, or in biodegradable choline chloride/urea or L-proline/glycerol eutectic mixtures, under hydrous conditions and at room temperature. Additional benefits include a very short reaction time (20 s), a wide substrate scope, and good to excellent yields (up to 98%) of the desired adducts. The practicality of the proposed protocol was demonstrated by setting up a sodium-mediated multigram-scale synthesis of the anticholinergic drug orphenadrine.