Hydrogen peroxide, electrophilic oxygenation with

The superacid-catalyzed electrophile oxygenation of saturated hydrocarbons, including methane with hydrogen peroxide (via H302 ) or ozone (via HOs ), allowed the efficient preparation of oxygenated derivatives. 

The aromatic ring of a phenoxy anion is the site of electrophilic addition, eg, in methylolation with formaldehyde (qv). The phenoxy anion is highly reactive to many oxidants such as oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and peroxyacetic acid. Many of the chemical modification reactions of lignin utilizing its aromatic and phenoHc nature have been reviewed elsewhere (53). 

It should be mentioned that with superacidic electrophilic oxygenation of methane either to methanol (with protonated hydrogen peroxide) or to formaldehyde (with protonated ozone), the products formed are indeed the protonated products (CH3OH2 and CH2=OH+, respectively), which are protected from further electrophilic oxygenation, which happens only too readily in conventional oxidations. 

As discussed in Section 10.1, asymmetric epoxidation of C=C double bonds usually requires electrophilic oxygen donors such as dioxiranes or oxaziridinium ions. The oxidants typically used for enone epoxidation are, on the other hand, nucleophilic in nature. A prominent example is the well-known Weitz-Scheffer epoxidation using alkaline hydrogen peroxide or hydroperoxides in the presence of base. Asymmetric epoxidation of enones and enoates has been achieved both with metal-containing catalysts and with metal-free systems [52-55]. In the (metal-based) approaches of Enders [56, 57], Jackson [58, 59], and Shibasaki [60, 61] enantiomeric excesses > 90% have been achieved for a variety of substrate classes. In this field, however, the same is also true for metal-free catalysts. Chiral dioxiranes will be discussed in Section 10.2.1, peptide catalysts in Section 10.2.2, and phase-transfer catalysts in Section 10.2.3. 

In 1983, Mimoun and co-workers reported that benzene can be oxidized to phenol stoichiometrically with hydrogen peroxide in 56% yield, using peroxo-vana-dium complex 1 (Eq. 2) [20]. Oxidation of toluene gave a mixture of ortho-, meta-and para-cresols with only traces of benzaldehyde. The catalytic version of the reaction was described by Shul pin[21] and Conte [22]. In both cases, conversion of benzene was low (0.3-2%) and catalyst turned over 200 and 25 times, respectively. The reaction is thought to proceed through a radical chain mechanism with an electrophilic oxygen-centered and vanadium-bound radical species [23]. 

Anhydrous Fe Cl3 catalyzes the stereospecific epoxidation of norbomene, the demethylation of A, A-dimethylaniline, and the oxidative cleavage of PhCMe(OH)CMe(OH)Ph (and other a-diols) by hydrogen peroxide (Table 11 and Scheme 4). For each class of substrate, the products parallel those that result from their enzymatic oxidation by cytochrome P-450. The close congruence of the prodncts indicates that the reactive oxygen in the Fe Cl3/HOOH model system and in the active form of cytochrome P-450 is essentially the same, with strong electrophilic oxene character (stabilized singlet atomic oxygen). 

The chemical reactivity of several heterocyclic derivatives is closely associated with a reactivity one might expect for open-chain unsaturated derivatives. The boron heterocycles are sensitive to oxygen or hydrogen peroxide 111, 169) and so apparently is 1,1,2,5-tetraphenylsilacyclo-pentadiene 17, 246). These reactions probably lead to ring cleavage but the products have not been characterized. Vinyl-metal bonds are frequently cleaved by electrophilic reagents and the heterocycles are no exception. 

Whereas so far oxidation reactions with O2 have been discussed, an important heterogeneous catalytic oxidation reaction is the epoxidation of propylene to propylene epoxide. Using hydroperoxide the reaction can be done over Ti dispersed on silica [133]. Ti becomes 4 coordinated as Si in Si02. With hydrogen-peroxide the reaction has been found to occur for Ti incorporated in the lattice of MFI zeolite [134]. The unique property of these systems is that the electrophilic nature of oxygen intermediates does not cause reaction with the allylic CH bond. It is proposed that the adsorbed intermediate is ... 

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