Additionally, we investigated this efficient glycosyl- ation method for other substrates as well, namely o-dini- trobenzene 2b and p-nitrobenzonitrile 2c (Scheme 2). Due to the nucleophilicity of the carbohydrate moieties, we expected that the nitrite-substitution would also work well in the case of substituted phenyl compounds having only one additional electron withdrawing group. However, SNAr reactions in DMF using K2CO3 or DBU as base failed completely. At room temperature,
no reaction took place whereas at elevated temperatures decomposition of the starting materials occurred. Solely NaH as the base gave the desired substitution products at room temperature (Table 2).
The significantly lower anomeric selectivity for O-aryl- ations with less activated nitrobenzenes 2b and 2c (Table 2, entries 1, 2, 4, and 5) can be explained in terms of a slower equilibration between the a- and b-anomer compared to the phthalodinitrile aglycon under similar reaction conditions. In case of the mannose nucleophile
1h, only a-anomers 4c and 5c were found due to the ste- ric effect in mannose.
In summary, anomeric O-arylation of partially pro- tected glycoses by nucleophilic nitrite substitution on nitrobenzenes is a practical alternative to similar O-aryl- ations using fluorobenzenes when the benzene moiety is activated for SNAr reactions by at least two electron withdrawing groups. The anomeric selectivity for nucleo-