Photoelectrocatalytic
water splitting is an important goal of modern
chemistry that is hindered by the slow kinetics of anodic water oxidation.
Additionally, the O2 byproduct of water oxidation catalysis
is of little economic value. One way to increase the energy efficiency
as well as economic feasibility of photoelectrocatalytic water splitting
as an industrial process is to couple the oxidation of water to the
formation of value-added, oxygenated products such as olefin epoxidation
or other selective oxygenation or oxidation reactionsrather
than the coupling of two O-atom equivalents to O2. However,
attempts at direct olefin epoxidation at the same anode where water
oxidation catalysis is happening suffer from competing one-electron
oxidation or overoxidation of the olefin substrate. Hence, an O-atom-transfer
mediator is needed. Hypervalent iodine reagents are known to perform
olefin epoxidations via O-atom transfer, oxidation reactions, as well
as a myriad of other group-transfer reactions. A drawback addressed
in the following work is that the synthesis of hypervalent iodine
reagents typically requires the use of a powerful oxidant such as
IO4
– or KHSO5 with multiple
steps and potentially explosive intermediates or side products. Herein,
we report proof-of-principle electrochemical syntheses of a series
of hypervalent iodine reagents, including: λ3-o-iodosobenzoic acid (IBA) in up to 58% isolated yield with
a Faradaic efficiency 89%; the previously inaccessible λ3-ethyl 2-iodosobenzoate (IBA-ester) with ∼78% Faradaic
efficiency; the well-known λ5-2-iodoxyphenyl tert-butyl sulfone (IBX-sulfone) with ∼51% Faradaic
efficiency; and a mixture of λ3-2-iodosobenzene sulfonic
acid (IBA-sulfonic acid) with λ5-2-iodoxybenzene
sulfonic acid (IBX-sulfonic acid) with an overall Faradaic efficiency
of >78%. Mechanistic studies using H2
18O
in
the electrochemical synthesis demonstrate that the O-atom in the product
is initially transferred from the oxidized, O-atom-containing surface
of the glassy carbon electrode, with 18O from H2
18O then replacing the O-atom vacancy on the carbon electrode
surface. Overall, the present contribution demonstrates the electrochemical,
green synthesis of novel and well-known hypervalent iodine reagents
using the O-atom from H2O. The reported studies also provide
insights into the electrochemical mechanism needed to optimize the
synthesis yields as well as to exploit those syntheses using O-atom
equivalents generated via (photo)electrochemical water splitting.