Fluorous compounds Catalysts

As would be expected, fluorous compounds are preferentially retained on fluorous silica gel [62]. Similarly, fluorous catalysts can be adsorbed on fluorous silica gel. These materials have been applied to reactions in organic solvents and water, both at room temperature and above [63-69]. The investigators have usually interpreted the transformations as bonded fluorous phase catalysis , which corresponds to sequence B-II in Fig. 1. However, there remains the possibility that at least some catalysis proceeds under homogeneous conditions via desorbed species. To our knowledge, fish-out experiments analogous to that conducted with the Teflon tape in Fig. 8 have not been conducted. 

Gladysz JA, Tesevic V (2008) Temperature-Controlled Catalyst Recycling New Protocols Based upon Temperature-Dependent Solubilities of Fluorous Compounds and Solid/Liquid Phase Separations. 23 67-89... 

Fluorous biphase reactions have been reviewed extensively in the past few years, and most important types of reaction may now be conducted under fluorous conditions [46,51], However, partitioning of catalysts and reagents into the fluorous phase is seldom perfect - even a loss of 1-2% of an expensive catalyst may be unacceptable. Solubility and partitioning between phases relies on a complex balance of properties and interactions, and rather than simply adding more fluorocarbon chains to a catalyst (which is a common approach to the problem of leaching of catalyst from the fluorous phase), studies have indicated that the partition coefficients of fluorous compounds may better be optimised by... 

With < 1 mol% MTO cyclobutanones are fully converted within one hour. Another approach consists of the use of a fluorous Sn-catalyst under biphasic conditions [245]. A perfluorinated tin(IV) compound, Sn[NS02C8F17]4, was recently shown to be a highly effective catalyst for BV oxidations of cyclic ketones with 35% hydrogen peroxide in a fluorous biphasic system (Fig. 4.83). The catalyst, which resides in the fluorous phase, could be easily recycled without loss of activity. 

Fluorous biphasic catalysis was pioneered by Horvath and Rabai [54, 55] who coined the term fluorous , by analogy with aqueous , to describe highly fluori-nated alkanes, ethers and tertiary amines. Such fluorous compounds differ markedly from the corresponding hydrocarbon molecules and are, consequently, immiscible with many common organic solvents at ambient temperature although they can become miscible at elevated temperatures. Hence, this provides a basis for performing biphasic catalysis or, alternatively, monophasic catalysis at elevated temperatures with biphasic product/catalyst separation at lower temperatures. A number of fluorous solvents are commercially available (see Fig. 7.16 for example), albeit rather expensive compared with common organic... 

As has been demonstrated in Chapter 4, fluorous catalysts are well suited for converting apolar substrates to products of higher polarity, as the partition coefficients of the substrates and products will be higher and lower, respectively, in the fluorous phase. The net results are little or no solubility limitation on the substrates and easy separation of the products. Furthermore, as the conversion level increases, the amount of polar products increases, further enhancing separation. One of the most important advantages of the fluorous biphase catalyst concept is that many well-established hydrocarbon-soluble catalysts could be converted to fluorous-soluble. In general, fluorous catalysts have similar structures and spectroscopic properties as the parent compounds. 

Although multifluorinated benzenes are not considered as fluorous compounds, ytterbium pentafluorobenzoate was used as a recyclable Lewis acid catalyst for one-pot condensation reaction to prepare 2,4-disubstituted quinolines (Scheme 7.24)... 

Compounds lb and 2b were the Urst fluorinated ligands tested in Mn-catalyzed alkene epoxidation [5,6]. The biphasic Uquid system perfluorooc-tane/dichloromethane led to excellent activity and enantioselectivity (90% ee) in the epoxidation of indene with oxygen and pivalaldehyde (Scheme 1, Table 1). In addition, the fluorous solution of the catalyst was reused once and showed the same activity and selectivity. This represents a considerable improvement over the behavior in the homogeneous phase, where the used catalyst was bleached and reuse was impossible. Unfortunately, indene was the only suitable substrate for this system, which failed to epoxidize other alkenes (such as styrene or 1,2-dihydronaphthalene) with high enantioselectivity. The system was also strongly dependent on the oxidant and only 71% ee was obtained in the epoxidation of indene with mCPBA at - 50 °C. 

The term fluorous was coined as an analogy to aqueous for highly fluorinated alkanes, ethers and tertiary amines [1], These compounds differ markedly from the corresponding hydrocarbon compounds to the extent that such compounds commonly give bilayers with conventional organic solvents. In this chapter, we will discuss the different approaches towards carrying out reactions in fluorous media and describe how reactants and catalysts can be engineered to be preferentially soluble in fluorous solvents. 

An important step towards a possible application of these compounds in technical syntheses of chemicals was the successful demonstration of a ther-momorphic reversible immobihzation of perfluorinated catalysts on teflon or other solid fluorous matrices, which might be practiced in industrial low-scale applications, e.g., of pharmaceutical intermediates in the case of quantitative recovery of the organometalHc compound. The facile separation due to their physicochemical behavior and the constant good performance in coupHng reactions of the involved perfluorinated pincer complex makes this system attractive for further investigations. 

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