• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.2711-2718
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• 2012

The alkylation of the ambident enolates of a methyl glycinate Schiff base with ethyl chloride was studied at B3LYP and MP2 levels with $6-31+G^*$ basis set. The free (E)-enolates and (Z)-enolate are similar in energy and geometry. The transition states for the alkylation of the free (E)/(Z)-enolate with ethyl chloride have similar energy barriers of ~13 kcal/mol. However, with a lithium ion, the (E)-enolate behaves as an ambident enolate and makes a cyclic lithium-complex in bidentate pattern which is more stable by 11-23 kcal/mol than the (Z)-enolate-lithium complexes. And the TS for the alkylation of (E)-enolate-lithium complex coordinated with one methyl ether is lower in energy than those from (Z)-enolate-lithium complexes by 4.3-7.3 kcal/mol. Further solvation model (SCRF-CPCM) and reaction coordinate (IRC) were studied. This theoretical study suggests that the alkylation of ambident enolates proceeds with stable cyclic bidentate complexes in the presence of metal ion and solvent.