Issue 22, 2015 - New progress has been made in the research of transition metal catalyzed alkylenamide oxidation at Xiamen University

Professor Ye Longwu's research group from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Xiamen University cooperated with Professor Lv Xin's research group to make important progress
in the oxidation of alkynesamide catalyzed by cheap transition metals.

The transition metal-catalyzed oxidation of alkynes has attracted much attention
in the field of organic synthetic chemistry in recent years because it can replace explosive and highly toxic diazo compounds for the production of A-carbonyl metal carbene active intermediates.
There are currently two major challenges in this type of reaction: 1) the catalysts that have been discovered are limited to a few precious metals such as Au and Rh catalysts; 2) Reaction intermediates are prone to excessive oxidation to generate dicarbonyl by-products, especially when non-terminal alkynes (internal alkyne) are used as substrates, which greatly limits the practical application of
such reactions.
Ye Longwu's research group found for the first time that cheap metal zinc can not only catalyze this kind of oxidation reaction, but also completely inhibit excessive oxidation side reactions, thus realizing the relationship between Isoquinolone and Isoquinolone.
Efficient and highly selective construction
of these two important heterocyclic skeletons.
In addition, further mechanistic experiments show that this type of reaction is likely to go through a new path of Lewis acid-catalyzed tandem oxidation/alkylation rather than the traditional metal carbene intermediate pathway
.
Therefore, this kind of cheap metal catalysis is expected to solve a series of noble metal catalytic alkyne oxidation reactions
that cannot be achieved.
(Medium)