Communications
DOI: 10.1002/anie.200701918
Aerobic Oxidations
Green, Transition-Metal-Free Aerobic Oxidation of Alcohols Using a
Highly Durable Supported Organocatalyst**
Babak Karimi,* Abbass Biglari, James H. Clark, and Vitaly Budarin
Dedicated to Süd-Chemie on the occasion of its 150th anniversary
Selective oxidation of alcohols to carbonyl compounds is one
of the most important and challenging transformations in the
synthesis of fine chemicals and intermediates.[1] Traditionally,
the oxidation of alcohols has been achieved with stoichio-
metric inorganic oxidants, notably CrVI-based reagents.[2]
Unfortunately, these oxidants are not only relatively expen-
sive but they also produce large quantities of noxious heavy-
metal waste. Consequently, the use of molecular oxygen as the
terminal oxidant in the transition-metal-catalyzed oxidation
of alcohols has received great attention in recent years to
achieve both economic and environmental benefits.[3,4] Of
particular interest in this field is the use of the stable nitroxyl
radical 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) in
combination with a co-oxidant as an alternative to metal-
based oxidants.[5] Additionally, it was shown that TEMPO-
catalyzed oxidations can be performed on a large industrial
scale using household bleach under non-aerobic conditions.[6]
Only a few groups have reported catalytic systems
involving TEMPO in combination with transition metals
such as Ru[7] and Cu[8,9] as alternative catalysts for the
oxidation of alcohols using molecular oxygen or air under
mild reaction conditions. However, many of these methods
are inefficient with aliphatic[8] and secondary alcohols,[9] and
their applicability are therefore limited. Furthermore, some
of them require an expensive transition-metal complex and/or
operate at relatively high temperatures (1008C).[7] Although,
some of these drawbacks can be partly avoided by using a
combination of TEMPO with a catalytic amount of MnII-
CoII,[10] the recyclability of the catalysts and product isolation
are still key important issues. TEMPO is a rather expensive
chemical reagent, and therefore its efficient recycling is highly
desirable, especially when the reactions are run on a large
scale. Therefore, several research groups have addressed the
problem of recyclability of TEMPO by designing various
types of supported TEMPO.[11,12] These catalysts were then
employed in combination with O2 and transition-metal
salts,[8–10] or other types of stoichiometric oxidizing agents in
the oxidation of alcohols.[5] However, while these catalytic
systems afford high product yields and selectivities, in most
cases partial degradation of the supported TEMPO catalysts
was observed. It is also worth mentioning that these protocols
still use non-recoverable, hazardous or expensive transition
metals. Recently, Toy and co-workers have developed an
attractive multipolymer reaction system for the aerobic
oxidation of alcohols and to recover both TEMPO and the
catalytic CuII complex at the same time.[13] However, this
method is only effective for the aerobic oxidation of highly
active primary benzylic alcohols after prolonged heating
(18 h) in CH3CN-H2O solvent mixtures.
It seems that while chemists have paid much attention to
designing new improved protocols based on TEMPO/tran-
sition-metal/O2 systems, they have largely ignored the advan-
tages inherent in a metal-free catalytic system. If such
oxidations could be performed in a transition-metal-free
catalytic system using air as terminal oxidant, the processes
would be significantly safer, cheaper, and greener than many
of the processes in use today. Recently, Hu and co-workers
presented a novel metal-free TEMPO-catalyzed aerobic
oxidation of alcohols.[14] While this method provided an
interesting achievement in the field of aerobic oxidation of
alcohols, it required expensive teflon-lined apparatus, high
loadings of TEMPO which is not recoverable (homogeneous,
up to 10 mol%), high operating pressures (up to 9 bar),
relatively high temperatures (up to 808C), and an environ-
mentally undesirable chlorinated solvent (CH2Cl2). Thus,
from the standpoint of practical, environmental, and eco-
nomic concerns, it is still highly desirable to develop cleaner,
milder, cheaper, and recyclable TEMPO catalytic systems for
the aerobic oxidation of alcohols, especially for large-scale
operations.
[*] Prof. Dr. B. Karimi, A. Biglari
Department of Chemistry
While several types of supported aminoxyl radicals have
already been reported,[11,12] to the best of our knowledge,
none of them have been studied in the transition-metal-free
aerobic oxidation of alcohols. We report herein for the first
time the use of a novel and extremely stable version of
supported TEMPO for the effective aerobic oxidation of
alcohols, with both activated and non-activated hydroxy
groups, in the absence of any transition-metal-containing co-
catalyst. It has been well documented that ordered mesopo-
rous materials (such as MCM-41[15] and SBA-15[16]) with
relatively uniform pore diameters (2–30 nm), large void
volumes, and high surface areas can serve as more well-
Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS)
PO Box 45195-1159, Gava Zang, Zanjan (Iran)
Fax: (+98)241-424-9023
E-mail: karimi@iasbs.ac.ir
Prof. J. H. Clark, Dr. V. Budarin
Clean Technology Centre, University of York
York YO10 5DD (UK)
[**] This work was supported by the IPM and IASBS Research Councils.
The authors thank the referees for their valuable comments.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
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ꢀ 2007 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 7210 –7213