Chemistry of polyhalogenated nitrobutadienes, 8: Nitropolychlorobutadienes--precursors for insecticidal neonicotinoids.

Nitropolychlorobutadienes are valuable precursors for highly functionalized acyclic or (hetero)cyclic compounds. In this 8th part of our synthetically oriented series we focus on the application of these versatile starting materials in the synthesis of analogs of the heterocyclic insecticides imidacloprid and thiacloprid, and the acyclic counterpart clothianidin. In addition to the main synthetic part, leading to imidazolidines or oxazolidines, further promising types of compounds derived by subsequent chemical modifications, are introduced. Most of the new compounds show high insecticidal activity.