A simple and advantageous protocol for the oxidation of alcohols with o-iodoxybenzoic acid (IBX)

Article abstract of DOI:10.1021/ol026427n

(figure presented) An efficient, user-friendly procedure for the oxidation of alcohols using IBX is described. Simply heating a solution of the alcohol in the presence of suspended IBX followed by filtration and removal of the solvent gives excellent yiel

Full text of DOI:10.1021/ol026427n

ORGANIC
LETTERS
2002
Vol. 4, No. 17
3001-3003
A Simple and Advantageous Protocol
for the Oxidation of Alcohols with
o-Iodoxybenzoic Acid (IBX)
Jesse D. More and Nathaniel S. Finney*
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UniVersity of California, San Diego,
La Jolla, California 92093-0358
nfinney@chem.ucsd.edu
Received June 26, 2002
ABSTRACT
An efficient, user-friendly procedure for the oxidation of alcohols using IBX is described. Simply heating a solution of the alcohol in the
presence of suspended IBX followed by filtration and removal of the solvent gives excellent yields of the corresponding carbonyl compounds.
We illustrate this procedure with a panel of primary and secondary alcohol substrates and note that it allows recycling and reuse of the
oxidant.
IBX (o-iodoxybenzoic acid) has gained great popularity as
a mild oxidant for the conversion of alcohols to aldehydes
or ketones.1,2 IBX is virtually insoluble in most organic
solvents, and the perception that solubility is a prerequisite
for reactivity accounts for the great length of time between
the discovery of IBX and the first practical applications of
it in DMSO (the only solvent in which it does dissolve).3,4
While not entirely inconvenient, the limitations of DMSO
as a solvent are apparent and are sufficient to have motivated
two independent syntheses of solid-phase analogues of IBX
(polystyrene- and silica-bound).5 In each case, the authors
correctly note that these solid-phase reagents expand the
range of viable solvents, simplify separation of oxidation
byproducts, and facilitate recovery and reuse of the oxidant.
We wish to point out that, in contrast to the dominant notion,
IBX is an effective heterogeneous oxidant in most organic
solvents. Indeed, the limited solubility of IBX makes it a de
facto solid-phase reagent, with all of the commensurate
benefits.
We have found that, at elevated temperatures, IBX is
sufficiently soluble in most organic solvents to permit clean
oxidation of alcohols to the corresponding aldehydes and
ketones (Tables 1 and 2).6,7,8,9 The primary differences
(1) (a) Frigerio, M.; Santagostino, M. Tetrahedron Lett. 1994, 35, 8019-
8022. (b) Frigerio, M.; Santagostino, M.; Sputore, S.; Palmisano, G. J. Org.
Chem. 1995, 60, 7272-7276. (c) De Munari, S.; Frigerio, M.; Santagostino,
M. J. Org. Chem. 1996, 61, 9272-9279. See also ref 2a.
(2) IBX has also found use in several other oxidative transformations.
For an overview, see: (a) Wirth, T. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2001, 40, 2812-
2814. For more recent developments, see: (b) Nicolaou, K. C.; Baran, P.
S.; Zhong, Y.-L.; Barluenga, S.; Hunt, W. K.; Kranich, R.; Vega, J. A. J.
Am. Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 2233-2244. (c) Nicolaou, K. C.; Montagnon,
T.; Baran, P. S.; Zhong, Y.-L. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 2245-2258.
(3) IBX was first prepared over 100 years ago: Hartman, C.; Mayer, V.
Chem. Ber. 1893, 26, 1727.
(4) Prior to its use as a terminal oxidant in its own right, IBX was
identified as a valuable precursor to the Dess-Martin periodinane: Dess,
D. B.; Martin, J. C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1991, 113, 7277-7287, and
references therein.
(5) (a) Mu¨lbaier, M.; Giannis, A. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2001, 40, 4393-
4394. (b) Sorg, G.; Mengel, A.; Jung, G.; Rademan, J. Angew. Chem., Int.
Ed. 2001, 39, 4395-4397.
(6) Caution! IBX, like other hypervalent iodine oxidants, can explode
on impact or heating. See: Plumb, J. B.; Harper, D. J. Chem. Eng. News
1990, 68 (29), 3.
(7) The use of THF leads to solvent oxidation as the primary reaction,
affording only small amounts of the desired aldehyde. The use of toluene
leads to intractable dark-colored reactions; we suspect that both IBX
decomposition and toluene oxidation are involved, although IBX does not
oxidize toluene in EtOAc.
10.1021/ol026427n CCC: $22.00 © 2002 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 07/20/2002

Table 1. Solvent Optimizationa
Table 2. Substrate Scope
solvent
yield(%)b
time
temp (°C)
EtOAc
CHCl3
DCE
acetone
PhH
CH3CN
THF
PhCH3
90
80
90
100
91
94
0c
3.25 hr
6.5 hr
3 hr
45 min
6.5 hr
25 min
s
80
55
80
55
80
80
80
80
0c
s
a All reactions carried out on 1 mmol scale. b Isolated yield. c Solvent
oxidation observed.
between solvents are their stability to IBX and the slight
solubility (or lack thereof) of the IBX-derived byproducts.
We regard EtOAc and DCE as the solvents of choice because
they are inert and all byproducts are insoluble at room
temperature, such that no purification is required beyond
simple filtration. Reactions in several other solvents provided
higher yields and shorter reaction times, but required
chromatographic purification. The oxidation proceeds well
with as few as 1.1 equiv of IBX, but an increased reaction
rate is observed with excess oxidant. As a matter of
convenience, we settled on 3 equiv to examine the solvent
and substrate scope of the oxidation.
This protocol for the use of IBX is broadly applicable and
insensitive to the presence of air or moisture. Virtually every
alcohol investigated was converted to the corresponding
carbonyl compound in >90% yield and substantially free of
impurities by 1H NMR and TLC analysis (Table 2) with two
exceptions.10 The first exception was benzyl alcohol (Table
2, entry 2) which, for reasons still under investigation, was
quantitatively oxidized to benzoic acid under our reaction
conditions.11 Oxidation of Fmoc-phenylglycinol (Table 2,
entry 10), the second exception, leads to consumption of
starting material without formation of isolable product,
presumably due to instability of the R-aminoaldehyde. Note,
however, that Fmoc-glycinal and unstable ribose- and
uridine-derived aldehydes are isolated in excellent yield and
purity. Also worthy of mention is the clean oxidation of
menthol to menthone (Table 2, entry 11), which was not
(8) We cannot exclude the possibility that these oxidations occur at the
interface of solvent and undissolved IBX. However, three points argue
against this: the oxidation is independent of apparent IBX morphology, a
solvent dependence is observed, and yields are reproducibly high.
(9) An early report (ref 1b) describes a single instance in which IBX in
THF oxidizes benzil to benzoin.
(10) The alcohols in Table 2 are commercially available and were used
as received, with the following exceptions. Entry 5: Prepared by Stille
coupling of 2,5-bis(trimethylstannyl)furan with o-iodobenzyl alcohol (Fang,
A. G., Finney, N. S., unpublished results). Entries 9, 10: Prepared by
reaction of amino alcohol with 1 equiv of FmocOSu. Entry 12: Prepared
according to Leonard, N. J.; Carraway, K. L. J. Heterocycl. Chem. 1966,
3, 485.
a All oxidations were carried out with 3 equiv of IBX in EtOAc at 80
°C, unless otherwise noted. b See text. c NMR yield. d Reaction performed
in 2:1 EtOAc/acetone. e 85% conversion. f Reaction performed in 1,2-DCE.
g
Reaction performed in CH3CN.
(11) Benzaldehyde is also oxidized to benzoic acid under these conditions.
We believe this is the first report of IBX allowing conversion of an alcohol
or aldehyde to the corresponding carboxylic acid.
accomplished efficiently with either of the solid-phase IBX
variants.5 Significantly, this protocol is also amenable to
3002
Org. Lett., Vol. 4, No. 17, 2002

preparative work, as the oxidation in Table 2, entry 12 has
been performed on a 30 mmol scale with identical yield and
purity.
will be of broad interest and use to the chemical com-
munity.14
Acknowledgment. The authors gratefully acknowledge
the National Institutes of Health for support of this research
(NIGMS-GM60875; NIGMS-GM07240 training grant sup-
port for J.D.M.) and the National Science Foundation for
support of the Departmental NMR facilities (CHE-9709183).
The authors thank Prof. Jay Siegel for helpful discussion.
As a final point, we have found that the IBX byproducts
isolated by filtration can be reoxidized to active IBX using
standard procedures.12,13 The regenerated IBX is indistin-
guishable from IBX freshly prepared from o-iodobenzoic
acid. Thus, the insolubility of IBX, previously regarded as
problematic, can be exploited to provide all of the advantages
of resin-bound IBX equivalents without requiring sophisti-
cated reagent preparation. We anticipate that this protocol
1
Supporting Information Available: H NMR spectra for
all crude oxidation products and complete spectroscopic data
for the oxidation product of Table 2, entry 5. This material
is available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.
(12) Frigerio, M.; Santogostino, M.; Sputore, S. J. Org. Chem. 1999,
64, 4537-4538.
(13) In a representative (and unoptimized) case, the IBX and IBX
byproducts were recovered essentially quantitatively by filtration from the
oxidation of 0.87 mmol of piperonyl alcohol with 1.2 equiv of IBX in
EtOAc. 1H NMR analysis of the crude mixture indicates the primary
component to be iodosylbenzoic acid (IBA). (For NMR characterization of
IBX and IBA, see: Bunton, C.A., Foroudian, H. J., Gillitt, N. D. J. Phys.
Org. Chem. 1999, 12, 758.). No residual IBX is present, although we observe
signals that we tentatively assign to a single compound of the same oxidation
state (I(V)). The recovered solids were oxidized with aqueous Oxone,
precipitated by cooling, and isolated by filtration, as described in ref 11,
providing 50% yield of recovered material, which is identical to authentic
OL026427N
(14) Representative experimental procedure: Piperonyl alcohol (0.15 g,
1.00 mmol) was dissolved in ethyl acetate (7 mL, 0.14 M final concentra-
tion), and IBX (0.84 g, 3.00 mmol) was added. The resulting suspension
was immersed in an oil bath set to 80 °C and stirred vigorously open to the
atmosphere. After 3.25 h (TLC monitoring), the reaction was cooled to
room temperature and filtered through a medium glass frit. The filter cake
was washed with 3 × 2 mL of ethyl acetate, and the combined filtrates
were concentrated to yield 0.14 g (90% yield, >95% pure by 1H NMR) of
piperonal as a waxy solid.
1
IBX by H NMR (DMSO-d6).
Org. Lett., Vol. 4, No. 17, 2002
3003