Base-catalyzed inversion of chiral sulfur centers. A computational study
D. Balcells, F. Maseras, N. Khiar
Org. Lett. 2004, 6, 2197-2200
Abstract: A theoretical study on the pyramidal inversion of the chiral sulfur compounds SO(X)(Me) (X = Cl, OMe, p-MePh) has been carried out by means of the DFT(Becke3LYP) method. Our results reveal that in the case of X = Cl, an organic tertiary amine such as NMe3 can catalyze the racemization. The base-catalyzed inversion of SO(Cl)(Me) is proposed as a feasible dynamic kinetic resolution mechanism for the synthesis of chiral sulfoxides by the DAG method.