Malodorants reactivity

Odor masking does little or nothing to control malodors it merely covers them up. Many materials used in masking odors are aldehydes, which are very chemically reactive and usually comprise the top note of a fragrance. Odor masking is used in many areas of household, industrial, and institutional use via products that mask such malodors as pel smells, smoke, cooking, and numerous other odors. The forms by which masking is executed vary, and can be solid, liquid, and aerosol. 

First, the corresponding sulfide 2 has relatively low volatility and is not malodorous. Second, fluorous sulfide 2 can be easily separated from the reaction mixture by continuous fluorous/organic liquid-liquid extraction and then oxidized to 1 with hydrogen peroxide for reuse. In addition, sulfoxide 1 has similar reactivities and compatibility as DMSO with a variety of functional groups due to the relatively inert nature of the fluorous subunit. 

Although the choice of phosphine ligand was found to be crucial for the formation and subsequent reactivity of the organocopper species, the presence of malodorous phosphine ligands was often found to interfere with product isolation. In our search for a more reactive copper that did not require the use of phosphorus ligands, we discovered that the lithium napthalenide reduction of a solution of a commercially available lithium 2-thienylcyanocuprate or CuCN LiCl complex produced a highly reactive zerovalent copper complex. 

The compounds shown in Fig. 1.1 are hazardous to work with and require special procedures for their handling phosphine 1 is used in an industrial safety demonstration and the heterocyclic derivatives 2 and 3 [24] are extremely malodorous and sensitive to oxygen, igniting on the tip of a syringe whilst 4 is explosive [25]. For this reason, despite the fact that they are readily functionalized as a result of the two reactive P-H bonds, and have applications in fields as diverse as medicinal chemistry [3], polymer science [26, 27], carbohydrate modification [28] and macrocychc research [29], they remain underused and poorly understood as a compound class. 

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