Efficient, Copper-Catalyzed, Aerobic Oxidation of Primary Alcohols

摘要

The oxidation of alcohols into aldehydes and ketones is of paramount importance in organic chemistry and numerous reagents have been reported to accomplish this transformation efficiently and selectively. However, most of these oxidants are either toxic, hazardous, or required in large excess. From an economical and environmental viewpoint, catalytic oxidations are particularly interesting, and major efforts have been devoted over the last few years to the discovery and development of efficient procedures employing O_2 (or air) or hydrogen peroxide as the ultimate stoichio-metric oxidant.'3' These attractive catalytic systems utilize cheap and readily available reactants, display high atom economy and release only innocuous by-products such as H_2O. Whilst a large variety of ruthenium complexes have been shown to catalyze this reaction, either on their own or with the assistance of various co-catalysts, only a limited number of other metals, such as cobalt and palladium, have been successfully employed so far. In most cases, however, the range of substrates tolerated in these aerobic oxidations is limited to certain classes of alcohols.