Site-selective Alkane Dehydrogenation of Fatty Acids.

摘要

The long-term goal of this research plan was to develop a catalyst to affect site-selective alkane dehydrogenations on fatty acid substrates. The one-year seed funding allowed us to investigate a number of iridium complexes in stoichiometric reactions with fatty acids. Ultimately, we discovered a system that does indeed selective dehydrogenation a specific site on the unactivated alkane of a fatty acid derivative. This type of selective dehydrogenation, which occurs at 40 C in 4 h, is described. This is the first example of a transition metal complex that is able to selectively dehydrogenation an internal carbon-carbon bond along an acyclic chain. In addition, we investigated the reactivity of a novel anionic iridium complex that was discovered during the search for the active and selective dehydrogenation catalyst. This latter work on the anionic iridium complex was published in Organometallics earlier this year.