Recent Advances in Iron Catalysis in Organic Synthesis

Recent advances in the iron-catalyzed cycloaddition reactions

“…Among all the available transition metals, iron is generally regarded as one of the most inexpensive, abundant, benign and relatively non-toxic metals [2]. Many transformations have been effectively promoted by iron catalysts, and excellent reviews on the iron-catalyzed reactions are available [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Bolm and co-workers [3] summarized the most important transformations with the aid of iron catalysts in 2004, including addition, substitution, cycloaddition, reduction and other reactions.…”

“…Recently, direct C-H transformation via iron catalysis was summarized by Shi and co-workers [9]. Applications of iron catalysts on other reactions were also summarized by Bauer [10], Enthaler [11], Nakamura [12], Liu [13] and Che [14] et al, respectively.…”

Fe-Catalyzed Oxidation Reactions of Olefins, Alkanes, and Alcohols: Involvement of Oxo- and Peroxo Complexes

“…Clearly, the development of new and improved methods for the selective transformation of alkanes belongs to the central goals of catalysis. Iron-catalyzed processes might be a smart tool for such transformations (for reviews see [75][76][77]). …”

“…In 2008, we introduced an FeCl 3 Á6H 2 O ligand-free catalyst system for the a-oxidation of b-ketoesters (Scheme 12) [85]. By using cyclic b-ketoesters as starting material 75 core is the most active catalyst [86]. In the oxidation of cyclohexane with only 0.3 mol% of the hexanuclear iron complex, total yields up to 30% of the corresponding alcohol and ketone were achieved with 50% H 2 O 2 (5.5-8 equiv.)…”

Iron Catalyzed Highly Enantioselective Epoxidation of Cyclic Aliphatic Enones with Aqueous H2O2

“…[1][2][3][4] Catalytic epoxidation methodologies based on iron complexes and peroxides (especially H 2 O 2 ), which can be considered as biologically inspired, are interesting because of the availability and low environmental impact of these reagents. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]16 Despite appealing, the approach is challenging because it requires the design of iron coordination complexes that can activate the O-O bond of peroxides to create selective metal based oxidants, and avoid the often facile production of hydroxyl radicals via the Fenton reaction. 10,11,17,18 Recent reports have disclosed successful examples where asymmetric epoxidation is accomplished, in some cases producing high levels of stereoselectivity ( Figure 1).…”