This review summarises the synthetic advances made using radical reactions in the field of organic chemistry during 2001. For the last few years there has been a significant move away from the use of tin compounds in the moderation of radical reactions and this was especially true this year. Kim~1 reported a tin-free intermolecular radical acylation reaction based on a previous allylation reaction of iodoalkanes reported by Zard. In a typical example a radical would undergo an addition-elimination reaction onto the sulfonyl oxime ether. In order to improve the efficiency of the reaction the methanesulfonyl oxime 2 rather than the ethanesulfonyl variant was used to increase the yield of radical addition product 3 over 4. The methanesulfonyl radical was found to undergo decomposition at 120 deg C to give sulfur dioxide and a methyl radical, which was much more efficient at abstracting an iodide from 1 compared with an ethyl radicals. As can be seen from the table in Scheme 1 the organo tellurium compound gave rise to 3 much more selectively than the equivalent iodo-compound.
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