Superactive Alkali Metal Hydride Metalation Reagents: LiH, NaH, and KH

Abstract

Alkali metal hydrides would be ideally suitable for the synthesis of carbanions , since only H 2 would be formed as second product; unfortunately, however, they are normally not very reactive. A synthesis of LiH, NaH and KH by hydrogenation of BuM (M = Li, Na, K) in hexane is now described here which leads to highly reactive metal hydrides. In addition, they deprotonate more selectively than other metalation reagents.