A New Class of Organocatalysts: Sulfenate Anions

Abstract

Sulfenate anions are known to act as highly reactive species in the organic arena. Now they premiere as organocatalysts. Proof of concept is offered by the sulfoxide/sulfenatecatalyzed (1-10 mol %) coupling of benzyl halides in the presence of base to generate trans-stilbenes in good to excellent yields (up to 99 %). Mechanistic studies support the intermediacy of sulfenate anions, and the deprotonated sulfoxide was determined to be the resting state of the catalyst. Scheme 3. Formation of 2,2',6,6'-tetrachlorostilbene on gram scale.Scheme 4. Application of different sulfoxide catalysts. Scheme 5. Preliminary mechanistic investigations of the sulfenateanion-catalyzed stilbene formation.

Expanding the Use of Peroxygenase from Oat Flour in Organic Synthesis: Enantioselective Oxidation of Sulfides

“…Enantiomerically pure sulfoxides have been used in asymmetric synthesis [ 5 ] as effective organocatalysts [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], additives or Lewis bases [ 9 , 10 ] and several metal complexes incorporating simple or bidentate sulfoxides as ligands have been developed [ 11 ].…”