Alkyl hydroperoxide, reactivity

The phenomenon that early transition metals in combination with alkyl hydroperoxides could participate in olefin epoxidation was discovered in the early 1970s [30, 31]. While m-CPBA was known to oxidize more reactive isolated olefins, it was discovered that allylic alcohols were oxidized to the corresponding epoxides at the same rate or even faster than a simple double bond when Vv or MoVI catalysts were employed in the reaction [Eq. (2)] [30]. 

These BDEs are higher than that for alkyl hydroperoxides (see Chapter 2) and this is the main reason for the extremely high reactivity of peroxyl radicals formed from aldehydes. The absolute rate constants of the reactions of different peroxyl radicals with aldehydes are collected in Table 8.7. 

Common alcohol oxidation methods employ stoichiometric amounts of toxic and reactive oxidants like Cr03, hypervalent iodine reagents (Dess-Martin) and peracids that pose severe safety and environmental hazards in large-scale industrial reactions. Therefore, a variety of catalytic methods for the oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes, ketones or carboxylic acids have been developed employing hydrogen peroxide or alkyl hydroperoxides as stoichiometric oxygen sources in the presence of catalytic amounts of a metal catalyst. The commonly used catalysts for alcohol oxidation are different MoAV(VI), Mn(II), Cr(VI), Re(Vn), Fe(II) and Ru complexes . A selection of published known alcohol oxidations with different catalysts will be presented here. 

Several pieces of evidence show that a desired kind of reactivity/selectivity for peroxo metal complexes can be obtained by careful design of the coordination sphere however, equilibria involving the ligands and solvent molecules must be taken into consideration. This point is essential when asymmetric oxidations are considered. Ti(IV) and V(V) catalyzed enantioselective oxidations with hydrogen peroxide or alkyl hydroperoxide are representative examples of this simation, and have been already carefully described. ... 

Although hydrogen peroxide and alkyl hydroperoxides in general are not sufficiently reactive to epoxidize alkenes, there are some exceptions. Experimental observations show that direct olefin epoxidation by H2O2, which is extremely sluggish otherwise, occurs in fluorinated alcohol (RfOH) solutions under mild conditions requiring no additional... 

Alkylperoxo species are extremely important reactive intermediates in the metal-catalyzed oxidation of hydrocarbons by alkyl hydroperoxides. 

There are also several situations where the metal can act as both a homolytic and heterolytic catalyst. For example, vanadium complexes catalyze the epoxidation of allylic alcohols by alkyl hydroperoxides stereoselectively,57 and they involve vanadium(V) alkyl peroxides as reactive intermediates. However, vanadium(V)-alkyl peroxide complexes such as (dipic)VO(OOR)L, having no available coordination site for the complexation of alkenes to occur, react homolyti-cally.46 On the other hand, Group VIII dioxygen complexes generally oxidize alkenes homolytically under forced conditions, while some rhodium-dioxygen complexes oxidize terminal alkenes to methyl ketones at room temperature. 

Transition metal peroxides, particularly peroxo (2), alkylperoxo (7) and hydroperoxo (8) complexes, are extremely important reactive intermediates in catalytic oxidations involving molecular oxygen, hydrogen peroxide and alkyl hydroperoxides as the oxygen source. Representative peroxo complexes are listed in Table 3, and alkylperoxo and hydroperoxo complexes are listed in Table 4 together with their reactivities. 

These complexes (205) were found to be good models for the reactive intermediates involved in the catalytic decomposition of alkyl hydroperoxides (Haber Weiss mechanism), and in the catalytic hydroxylation of hydrocarbons by ROOH. 

Alkyl hydroperoxides, including ethyl hydroperoxide, cuminyl hydroperoxide, and tert-butyl hydroperoxide, are not used by V-BrPO to catalyze bromination reactions [29], These alkyl hydroperoxides have the thermodynamic driving force to oxidize bromide however, they are kinetically slow. Several examples of vanadium(V) alkyl peroxide complexes have been well characterized [63], including [V(v)0(OOR)(oxo-2-oxidophenyl) salicylidenaminato] (R = i-Bu, CMe2Ph), which has been used in the selective oxidation of olefins to epoxides. The synthesis of these compounds seems to require elevated temperatures, and their oxidation under catalytic conditions has not been reported. We have found that alkyl hydroperoxides do not coordinate to vanadate in aqueous solution at neutral pH, conditions under which dihydrogen peroxide readily coordinates to vanadate and vanadium( V) complexes (de la Rosa and Butler, unpublished observations). Thus, the lack of bromoperoxidase reactivity with the alkyl hydroperoxides may arise from slow binding of the alkyl hydroperoxides to V-BrPO. 

Oxidation reactions of hydrocarbons have a typical course. From the low rates, the reaction accelerates successively due to the consecutive formation of another source of free radicals which increases the rate of the primary initiation reaction. The amplification of the number of reactive free radicals is caused mainly by the decomposition of alkyl hydroperoxides, dialkyl and diacyl peroxides and peracids which are formed as intermediates in the oxidation reaction. 

Competition between metal ion-induced and radical-induced decompositions of alkyl hydroperoxides is affected by several factors. First, the competition is influenced by the relative concentrations of the metal complex and the hydroperoxide. At high concentrations of the hydroperoxide relative to the metal complex, alkoxy radicals will compete effectively with the metal complex for the hydroperoxide. Competition is also influenced by the nature of the solvent (see above). Contribution from the metal-induced reaction is expected to predominate at low hydroperoxide concentrations and in reactive solvents. The contribution from the metal-induced decomposition to the overall reaction is readily determined by carrying out the reaction in the presence of free radical inhibitors, such as phenols, that trap the alkoxy radicals and, hence, prevent radical-induced decomposition.129,1303 Thus, Kamiya etal.129 showed that the initial rate of the cobalt-catalyzed decomposition of tetralin hydroperoxide, when corrected for the contribution from radical-induced decomposition by the... 

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