A Novel Approach to the Efficient Oxygenation of Hydrocarbons Under Mild Condition. Superior Oxo Transfer Selectiivity Using Dioxiranes

A review. The design of efficient and general methods for the selective oxy-functionalization of unactivated carbon-hydrogen bonds is a major challenge. A low level of selectivity is characteristic of large-scale oxidn. of hydrocarbons performed under customary industrial oxidizing conditions (e.g., the catalytic air oxidn. of cycloalkanes); in these processes, selectivity is difficult to control, because of free-radical chain reactions. In the last decades much work was devoted to the search for general methods of selective oxidn. that could be applied to a variety of satd. hydrocarbons, but just a few leading methods appear encouraging at the present time. An approach based on use of dioxiranes as selective oxidants. The dioxiranes show promise as efficient oxidants with high selectivity for simple and structurally complex targets.