Trithiazyl trichloride 1 converts primary and secondary enamines, enamides and 1,2,3-triazoles into 1,2,5thiadiazoles. These mild reactions provide one-pot routes to various alkyl, aryl, functional and quaternary 1,2,5-thiadiazoles, in moderate to good yields. The trimer 1 reacts as a 1,2-bis-electrophile adding an N-S unit across C᎐ ᎐ C-N. For primary enamines 15 N-labelling reveals an additional, minor pathway in which N-S-N is added across C᎐ ᎐ C, with elimination of the enamine nitrogen. With N-alkylated enamines the alkyl group is retained in a quaternised thiadiazole, but this can be dealkylated in situ. Enamides react similarly but with spontaneous N-deacylation. 1,2,3-Triazoles with electron withdrawing groups to stabilise their acyclic diazoimine tautomers also give 1,2,5-thiadiazoles, with loss of dinitrogen. Mechanisms are proposed for these new reactions.We have shown that trithiazyl trichloride, (NSCl) 3 , "the trimer" 1 reacts readily with nucleophilic unsaturated substrates, by electrophilic attack or by cycloaddition, to give a useful range of sulfur-nitrogen heterocylic compounds. 1 Thus pyrroles, for example, are converted into isothiazoles or fused 1,2,5thiadiazoles. 2 It seemed that enamines might undergo somewhat analogous reactions, with addition of the trimer across the bisnucleophilic enamine group or across the carbon-carbon double bond, and we now describe these and related reactions.
Results and discussion
Reactions with primary enaminesWe first treated the stable primary enamines 3-aminocrotononitrile 2a and methyl, ethyl and p-nitrobenzyl 3-aminocrotonates 2b-d with the trimer 1 (1 equiv.