Phase transfer catalysis alkene oxidation

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). 

The synthetic applications of the palladium-catalyzed oxidation of alkenes to ketones have recently been reviewed.639 Improvements in the Wacker palladium-catalyzed ketonization of terminal alkenes have been obtained using phase-transfer catalysis,641 polyethylene glycol642 or phosphomolybdovanadic acids.643... 

The conversion of alkenes to oxiranes using ketone catalysts in the presence of a terminal oxidant such as Oxone has proved to be an important advance in the past decade, especially for the formation of chiral oxiranes (see Section 1.03.4.3.3(ii)). The conversion of alkenes to oxiranes has been comprehensively reviewed <20020R219>. The formation of the dioxirane species usually proceeds in situ, whether it be the formation of methyl(trifluoromethyl)-dioxirane in an academic setting <1995JOC3887>, or under conditions amenable to large-scale conversion of aromatic alkenes to oxiranes (oxone, acetone, ethyl acetate, no phase-transfer catalysis) <20020PD405>. 

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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