Electrocatalysis in Electroorganic Synthesis

Electroorganic synthesis deals with conversion of organic compounds into useful products by anodic oxidation or cathodic reduction. Today there exist literally thousands of published examples of electrosynthesis reactions but only a very small number—certainly not more than several tens—are really exploited commercially, the best known example being the cathodic hydrodimerization of acrylonitrile to adipodinitrile, a precursor to hexam-ethylene diamine, which is the aminoconstituent of nylon 6,6 (779)  

A second, less well-known example is the anodic conversion of toluenes in methanol as solvent to benzaldehyde-dimethoxy acetals (180, 7S7)  

Direct Anodic and Cathodic Electrochemical Conversions of Organic Substrates 

Many anodic and cathodic conversions are not mediated by soluble redox couples or by redox coatings but are essentially initiated by a one-electron charge transfer between the electrode and the organic molecule-generating radical ions or radicals as first, reactive intermediates  

These intermediates, reactive as they are, may react with different competing reactants yielding different reaction products. Very reactive and shortlived intermediates, which do not live long enough to leave the electrode surface by diffusion and intermediates which are adsorbed at the electrode 

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