Diastereoselective Synthesis of a Strawberry Flavoring Agent by Epoxidation of Ethyl trans-#beta#-Methylcinnamate

摘要

The epoxidation of alkenes is an important transformation that is discussed in virtually every introductory organic chemistry textbook. Yet, as has been noted before (1), there is a surprising paucity of experiments for undergraduate instruction that involve the synthesis of epoxides. Although this problem has been addressed to some extent in recent years by the publication of several elegant epoxidation experiments (1-6), few procedures designed for the undergraduate organic laboratory illustrate the common use of peracids to epoxidize alkenes (4-6).