Molybdenum(VI) catalyses effectively the sodium perborate oxidation of aryl sulfides to sulfoxides in glacial acetic acid. The catalysed oxidations of diphenyl sulfide and S-phenylmercaptoacetic acids are zero order with respect to the oxidant and first order with respect to the sulfides and Mo(VI). Trichloroacetic acid enhances the oxidation. Glacial acetic acid is a suitable solvent; methanol or ethylene glycol suppresses the reaction. The kinetic results reveal dioxoperoxomolybdenum(VI) as the reactive oxidant.Economic and environmental constraints necessitate replacement of oxidation procedures requiring large amounts of heavy metals by catalytic alternatives using clean oxidants. Particularly of interest are procedures that use readily available catalysts and cheap oxygen sources. Sodium perborate (NaBO 3 .4H 2 O), a peroxo salt of anionic formula [B 2 (O 2 ) 2 (OH) 4 ] 2-, is an inexpensive, innocuous, easily handled, stable, large-scale industrial chemical primarily used in detergents. It is an effective reagent in organic synthesis, acetic acid is the solvent of choice 1-3 and we reported recently the mechanisms of oxidation of organic sulfides and anilines in glacial acetic acid. 4,5 In aqueous acetic acid perborate behaves as H 2 O 2 and metal ion catalysis is that of H 2 O 2 oxidation; 6,7 presence of water reduces the efficiency and is of little synthetic utility. 1 So far there is no report on metal ioncatalysed perborate oxidation in glacial acetic acid, hence this work. Muzart 8 reports Cr(VI)-assistance of perborate oxidation in benzene-water (1:1) under phase transfer conditions.
Results and discussionSodium perborate (SPB) is insoluble in organic solvents like methanol, ethanol, 2-propanol, t-butanol, dimethylformamide, dioxane, acetonitrile, 2-ethoxyethanol, 2-butoxyethanol, 2-methoxypentan-2,3-diol and glycerol but readily dissolves in acetic acid and less so in ethylene glycol. In acetic acid, with catalytic amount of Na 2 MoO 4 , SPB effectively oxidises diphenyl sulfide to diphenyl sulfoxide, identified by its IR spectrum (1034 cm -1 ) and melting point (69 °C; lit. 70 °C); the yield is 75%. S-Phenylmercaptoacetic acid is oxidised to phenylsulfinylacetic acid, identified by its IR spectrum; 1078 (SO), 1724 (C = O), 3423, 3227, 3023 (OH) cm -1 . 3 .9H 2 O) are insoluble in glacial acetic acid and could not be employed as catalysts. Oxoacids of transition metals (vanadic, molybdic and tungstic acids) and phosphomolybdic and phosphotungstic acids also do not dissolve in glacial acetic acid. Although Zr(IV) catalyses the oxidation the catalytic efficiency is only about one-half of Mo(VI) and the kinetic results lack reproducibility; ZrOCl 2 .8H 2 O was the salt used.