Reactivity of 2-thiohydantoins towards various electrophilic reagents: applications to the synthesis of new 2-ylidene-3,5-dihydro-4H-imidazol-4-ones.

A new route to 5-(imidazolidin-2-ylidene)-2-methylsulfanyl-3,5-dihydro-imidazol-4-ones 4a-c using ketene dithioacetal intermediates 3a-c is described. The reactivity of thiohydantoin derivatives 2a-c towards N,N-dimethylformamide diethylacetal (DMF-DEA) was also explored using solvent-free technique under microwave irradiation (mu omega). The (1)H- and (13)C-NMR spectra of some representative products are discussed.