Production strategies using catalysts

This strategy is used for the synthesis of three different exact-mass telechelic oligomers. GPC, NMR, and GC/MS evidence indicates that clean depolymerization chemistry occurs for all three samples. Poly( 1,4-butadiene) (38) is broken down into oligomeric units with two, three, and four repeat units using catalyst 23. Catalyst 14 is more efficient and produces even lower molecular weight oligomers, primarily one and two repeat units. When allylchlorodimethylsilane is used instead of ethylene with 14, telechelic dimers are the only product. 

Takemoto and coworkers extended their palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation strategy using allyl acetate and chiral phase-transfer catalyst to the quaternization of 13 [23b]. A correct choice of the achiral palladium ligand, (PhO P, was again crucial to achieve high enantioselectivity and hence, without chiral phosphine ligand on palladium, the desired allylation product 15 was obtained with 83% ee after hydrolysis of the imine moiety with aqueous citric acid and subsequent benzoylation (Scheme 2.12). 

Even the lawn format still does not represent the final limit of miniaturization. The one well/one catalyst or one bead/one catalyst strategy, where catalyst identity is spatially coded, can be replaced by in situ synthesis combined with mass spectrometry [48]. The advantage of this strategy is the use of a mass spectrometer for the synthesis, reaction and analysis. The described electrospray ionization procedure helps to avoid the cleavage of chemical bonds, which would falsify the results. The synthesis step does not have to deliver clean and isolated products. Instead, after synthesis, the reactants are first separated by a quadrupole. In a second step, they are further reacted in an octapole and the reaction products are finally isolated in a second quadrupole and analyzed. Figure 3.15 describes the screening process in detail [49],... 

A so far still unsolved problem is the direct enantioselective epoxidation of simple terminal olefins. For example the epoxidation of propylene that was achieved with a 41% ee almost twenty years ago by Strukul and his coworkers using Pt/diphosphine complexes is still unsurpassed. Unfortunately such low ee s are of no practical interest. The problem was circumvented by Jacobsen using hydrolytic kinetic resolution of racemic epoxides (Equation 26) and is practised on a multi 100 kg scale at Chirex. The strategy used is to stereose-lectively open the oxirane ring of a racemic chiral epoxide leaving the other enantiomer intact. Reactions are carried out to a 50% maximum conversion. The catalyst belongs to the metal-salen class described above and can be recycled. The products are separated by fractional distillation. 

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