Epoxide phenol reaction catalysis

The basic catalysis of the epoxide-phenol reaction has been studied by a variety of authors (12,13). In general, the conclusion has been that basic catalysis gives selectivity for the phenol-epoxide reaction over the secondary alcohol-epoxide reaction (the secondary alcohol being formed from the opening of an epoxide). Although the base catalyzed reaction has been studied, the specific mechanism for triphenylphosphine Catalysis has not been determined. We propose the mechanism shown in Reaction Scheme 3 which is consistent with our experimental results. 

Heteropoly acids can be synergistically combined with phase-transfer catalysis in the so-called Ishii-Venturello chemistry for oxidation reactions such as oxidation of alcohols, allyl alcohols, alkenes, alkynes, P-unsaturated acids, vic-diols, phenol, and amines with hydrogen peroxide (Mizuno et al., 1994). Recent examples include the epoxidations of alkyl undecylenates (Yadav and Satoskar, 1997) and. styrene (Yadav and Pujari, 2000). 

These reactions are catalysed by acids such as Lewis acids, phenols, and alcohols. The hydroxyl groups formed by the amine epoxide addition are active catalysts, so that the curing reaction usually shows an accelerating rate in its early stages, typical of auto catalysis. In some cases when the amine is present in less than stoichiometric concentrations, reaction of epoxide and hydroxyl may occur to produce an ether group ... 

However, attempts to develop similar selective catalysts failed in the case of reactions that require one oxygen atom, like the oxidation of methane, ethane and other alkanes to alcohols, aromatic compounds to phenols, alkenes to epoxides, and many others. These mechanistically simple reactions assume one difficult condition the presence of active sites that upon obtaining two atoms from gas-phase 02 can transfer only one of them to the molecule to be oxidized, reserving the second atom for the next catalytic cycle with another molecule. This problem remains a hard challenge for chemical catalysis. 

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