An electrolytic system that uses solid-supported bases for in situ generation of a supporting electrolyte from acetic acid solvent

Article abstract of DOI:10.1002/anie.200500977

Re-usability is trumps: The electrolytic system presented here (see graphic) has been used for the anodic acetoxylation of various compounds to provide the corresponding acetoxylated products in good to excellent yields. The acetoxylated products and the solid-supported bases can easily be separated by filtration, and the separated solid-supported bases can be re-used many times. (Chemical Equation Presented)

Full text of DOI:10.1002/anie.200500977

Communications
Electrochemistry
An Electrolytic System That Uses Solid-
Supported Bases for In Situ Generation of a
Supporting Electrolyte from Acetic Acid
Solvent**
Toshiki Tajima and Toshio Fuchigami*
Electroorganic synthesis is one of the most useful methods in
organic synthesis and is even applied in large-scale industrial
processes.[1] It has recently attracted much interest as an
environmentally friendly method because electrodes are
inherently environmentally friendlier reagents than conven-
tional oxidizing and reducing reagents. However,large
[*] T. Tajima, Prof. Dr. T. Fuchigami
Department of Electronic Chemistry
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8502 (Japan)
Fax: (+81)45-924-5489
E-mail: fuchi@echem.titech.ac.jp
[**] This work was supported by the Nissan Motor Co., the Mizuho
Foundation for the Promotion of Sciences, the foundation “Hattori–
Hokokai”, and the Venture Business Laboratory of the Tokyo
Institute of Technology.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
under http://www.angewandte.org or from the author.
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DOI: 10.1002/anie.200500977
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Angewandte
Chemie
amounts of supporting electrolytes are necessary to provide
sufficient electrical conductivity to the solvents for electrol-
yses. Therefore,after the electrolyses,separation of the
supporting electrolytes is required,and these separated
supporting electrolytes generally become industrial waste
because they are mostly unrecyclable,except for some
industrialized cases.[2] Furthermore,the inefficient separation
of supporting electrolytes from solvents requires a huge
consumption of energy and produces large amounts of
additional industrial waste.
To solve such separation and industrial-waste problems,a
capillary-gap cell,[3] distillation of supporting electrolytes,[2]
solid polymer electrolytes,[4] electrochemical microreactors,[5]
and a thin-layer flow cell[6] have been developed. To the best
of our knowledge,an ideal electroorganic synthetic system
from the viewpoint of green sustainable chemistry should be
one that does not require the addition of any supporting
electrolytes. Although solid polymer electrolytes,electro-
chemical microreactors,and the thin-layer flow cell provide
such an ideal electroorganic synthetic system,they require
special equipment.
It is well known that electron transfer between one solid
and another is very difficult.[7] Therefore,it can be expected
that solid-supported bases should act as bases in bulk
solutions and at the same time be electrochemically inactive
reagents at an electrode surface. In the presence of solid-
supported bases such as amines,protic organic solvents such
as acetic acid should dissociate into anions and protons to
some extent [Eqs. (1) and (2)]. This system would be suitable
Figure 1. Cyclic voltammograms of a) N-methylmorpholine (1, 0.1m)
and polystyrene-supported morpholine (2, 0.1m) in 0.1m nBu4NBF4/
MeCN, and b) AcOH/MeCN (50/50 v/v) in the presence of 2 (0.1m)
recorded at a Pt disk anode (f=0.8 mm). The scan rate was
100 mVsÀ1
.
SCE and a reduction current for H+ were observed.[9]
Therefore,it is clear that solid-supported bases cause acetic
acid to dissociate into acetate anions and protons,and the
resulting protons seem to act as the main carrier of the
electronic charge.
for electroorganic synthesis because the protons derived from
the protic organic solvent would play the role of the main
carrier of an electronic charge via ammonium ions [Eq. (2)].[8]
In this system,protic organic solvents would therefore serve
both as a solvent and a supporting electrolyte generated in
situ. We report herein a novel electrolytic system using solid-
supported bases for the generation of a supporting electrolyte
in situ from acetic acid as the solvent.
We then investigated anodic a-acetoxylation using solid-
supported bases with phenyl 2,2,2-trifluoroethylsulfide (3)[10]
as the model compound as anodic acetoxylation is one of the
most useful reactions in electroorganic synthesis.[11] The
overall experimental procedure is illustrated in Figure 2.
The results with various solid-supported bases are shown
in Table 1; polystyrene-supported morpholine gave the a-
acetoxylated product 4 in low yield (entry 1),while similar
The cyclic voltammograms of N-methylmorpholine (1)
and polystyrene-supported morpholine (2) were first mea-
sured in nBu4NBF4/anhydrous acetonitrile. As shown in
Figure 1a, 1 is easily oxidized at around 1.2 V vs. SCE,
while 2 is not oxidized at all,even when stirring. This means
that solid-supported bases are not oxidized at the electrode
surface. Next,the cyclic voltammogram of 2/AcOH (0.1m
based on the concentration of morpholine) was measured;
however,and rather unexpectedly,neither an oxidation
current nor a reduction current was observed. Acetonitrile
was then added as a co-solvent and the cyclic voltammogram
of 0.1m 2/AcOH/MeCN was measured. As shown in Fig-
À
ure 1b,both an oxidation wave for AcO at about 2.1 V vs.
Figure 2. Schematic presentation of the experimental procedure.
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Communications
Table 1: Anodic acetoxylation of 3 with various solid-supported bases.
Entry
1
Solid
PS[b]
n
Base
Yield[a] [%]
39
1
pKa =8.33
2
PS[c]
2
81 (77)[d]
Figure 3. Yield of acetoxylated product 4 depending on the number N
of reuses of the silica gel supported morpholine.
[e]
3
4
SiO2
SiO2
3
3
72 (68)
24
and did not decrease at all upon reuse of the silica gel
supported morpholine. This clearly shows that solid-sup-
ported bases are not subject to oxidative decomposition at the
electrode surface and therefore recyclable many times.
The generality of the new electrolytic system is shown in
Table 2. Anodic acetoxylation of 6 was carried out to provide
pKa =5.22
pKa =6.95
5
6
SiO2
SiO2
3
3
56 (54)
25
Table 2: Anodic acetoxylation of various compounds with silica gel
supported morpholine.
5 pKa =24.3
[a] 19F NMR spectroscopically determined yield based on the CF3 group
and using monofluorobenzene as an internal standard. [b] Polystyrene.
[c] Porous polystyrene. [d] Yield of isolated product in parentheses.
[e] Silica gel.
Entry Substrate
Electricity
Product
Yield[a] [%]
[”96480 CmolÀ1
]
reactions with porous polystyrene-supported and silica gel
supported morpholine proceeded efficiently to provide 4 in
good to high yields (entries 2 and 3). These results indicate
that the solvent compatibility of the solids is highly significant.
The acetoxylated product 4 was obtained in only 24% yield
with silica gel supported pyridine,whose basicity is lower than
that of morpholine (Table 1,entry 4),which means it does not
dissociate acetic acid into acetate anions and protons
1
2
3
6
6
5
91
72[b]
95
efficiently. On the other hand,the acetoxylated product
was formed in 56% yield with silica gel supported imidazole
(Table 1,entry 5). Unexpectedly,anodic acetoxylation of
4
3
resulted in a low yield (25%; Table 1,entry 6) when silica gel
supported 5 was used,even though its basicity is much higher
than that of morpholine. This can be explained as follows.
Silica gel supported 5 can dissociate acetic acid into acetate
anions and protons efficiently; however, 5 is protonated by
[a] Yield of isolated product. [b] The benzylic diacetoxylated product was
also formed.
the resulting protons because it is strongly basic. Therefore, the corresponding acetoxylated product 7 in excellent yield.
the equilibrium of Equation (2) shifts to the left,and the Anodic benzylic acetoxylation of 8 also proceeded to provide
resulting proton mobility is much lower than those of the the acetoxylated product 9 in good yield. Furthermore,anodic
other bases.[12]
acetoxylation of 10,a phenol derivative,took place to provide
Anodic acetoxylation of 3 was successfully carried out 10 the acetoxylated product 11 in excellent yield.
times after recycling of the silica gel supported morpholine. In
this recycling process,silica gel supported morpholine is easily
In conclusion,we have developed a novel electrolytic
system for anodic acetoxylation that uses solid-supported
separated and recovered by simple filtration (Figure 2). As bases. This system has many practical advantages and
shown in Figure 3,the yield of 4 was always more than 65% characteristics. For instance,it does not require addition of
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Angewandte
Chemie
supporting electrolytes as the supporting electrolyte is
generated in situ from acetic acid as the solvent. Furthermore,
it allows a simple separation of the acetoxylated products and
solid-supported bases by filtration,and the solid-supported
bases are electrochemically stable and recyclable. The
limitations of this new methodology and its further applica-
tion for electroorganic synthesis are now under investigation.
In addition,we plan to apply this system to a capillary-gap cell
to reduce the high internal resistance compared with conven-
tional methods.
Received: March 17,2005
Revised: April 19,2005
Published online: June 29,2005
Keywords: acetoxylation · electrochemistry · electroorganic
.
synthesis · green chemistry · solid-supported base
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