Ester metathesis overview and cyclopropanation of aliphatic esters and alcohols with a homogeneous Ru(II) catalyst.

摘要

We recently reported a novel ester metathesis reaction where an unsymmetrical ester such as ethyl hexanoate can be transformed to a statistical mixture of starting material, hexyl ethanoate, ethyl acetate and hexyl hexanoate as expected from a metathesis reaction, with 0.2mol% of commercially available Ru catalyst.1 Although chemical metathesis has been observed for alkanes, alkenes and alkynes, to the best of our knowledge it has not been previously reported for the ester functionality.