Phosphines, supported aqueous-phase

Although the first aim of the use of a water-soluble palladium catalyst in allylic alkylation in a two-phase system was the recycling of the catalyst, this methodology finds quite interesting applications in the deprotection of peptides as well as in the selective alkylation of uracils and thiouracils. More recently, the effective use of supported aqueous-phase catalysis as well as asymmetric alkylation in water in the presence of surfactants or amphiphilic resin-supported phosphines open new applications and developments for the future. 

The most severe dra wback in homogeneous catalysis is the separation of the catalyst from the reaction mixture. The industrial success of the aqueous two-phase hydroformylation ofpropene to n-butanal [1] in Ruhrchemie AG in 1984 represents the considerable progress in this field. However, aqueous/organic biphasic catalysis has its limitations when the water solubility of the starting materials proves too low, as in hydroformylation of higher olefins (see Chapter 1). To solve this issue, a variety of approaches have been attempted. Additions of co-solvents [2] or surfactants [3, 4] to the system or application of tenside ligands [5, 6] and amphiphilic phosphines [7, 8] are ways to increase the reaction rates. Other approaches such as fluorous biphase system (FBS see Chapter 4) [9], supported aqueous phase catalysis (SAPC see Section 2.6) [10], supercritical CO2 (cf. Chapter 6) [11] and ionic liquids (cf Chapter 5) [12] have also been introduced to deal with this problem. 

A further evidence on the acceleration enjoyed by a typical Pd-catalysed reaction, the Heck reaction, in an ionic phase ( V-mcthyl-Y.Y. V.-trioctylammonium chloride or Aliquat 336) is found in a triphasic protocol developed by Tundo and coworkers. 7b.The arylation of electron poor olefins is catalysed by palladium supported on charcoal (Pd/C) and is carried out in the heterogeneous isooctane/Aliquat 336/water system (Figure 27). Under this multiphasic condition, Aliquat 336 forms a third liquid phase between the organic and the aqueous phase that traps the catalyst. The use of phosphines is not necessary. As a matter of fact, Aliquat 336 incorporates the solid-supported catalyst and ensures an efficient mass transfer between the bulk phases resulting in an increase of the reaction rate of an order of magnitude compared to the reaction in the absence of the ionic liquid. A determing role is played by the base while I LN drives the reaction towards the formation of ethyl cinnamate, reaction carried out in the presence of KOH lead to formation of Ullmann dimerisation products. 

The water-soluble phosphine, PTA, was grafted to dendrimers and reacted with [RuCl2(p-cymene)]2- The resulting dendritic complexes were applied to the redox isomerization of l-octen-3-ol in water/re-heptane biphasic systems at 75°C. Albeit the reactions were slow, there was a large positive dendritic effect The catalytic activity increased with increasing size of the dendritic support, and the catalyst derived from the third generation dendrimers afforded 98% conversion whereas use of the soluble monomeric catalyst led to only 38% conversion under the same conditions. The catalyst was recycled in the aqueous phase by decantation with no or negligible loss of the catalytic activity (138). 

---