Synthesis of Sulphones from Sulphonyl Fluorides and Organometallic Compounds

Introduction Recently, /3-disulphones wrere synthesised in high yields from sulphonyl fluorides by interaction with alkylmagnesium bromides [1]. It is assumed that this reaction proceeds through the formation of a monosulphone which undergoes a-metallation followed by further reaction with the sulphonyl fluoride to produce /?-disulphone. Since aromatic sulphones cannot be metallated at the a-position, it seemed of interest from the synthetic and mechanistic points of view to investigate the reaction of sulphonyl fluorides with Grignard's reagents of the aromatic type. Moreover, this study extends our previous investigations on the reactions of sulphonyl chlorides with organocadmium reagents [2-4].