JACS: research group of Huang Zheng, Shanghai Institute of organic science, Chinese Academy of Sciences has made progress in alkane conversion

Alkanes are the main components of petrochemical resources such as oil and natural gas At present, their utilization rate in synthetic chemistry is very low, and they are mainly used as fuels It is of great significance to develop new methods to transform it into high value-added chemicals However, there are no guiding or activating groups in simple alkanes, only low polarity and high bond energy inert C (SP 3) - H bond and C (SP 3) - C (SP 3) bond, so it is highly challenging for selective activation of alkanes Linear aldehydes and linear amines are intermediates and raw materials in great demand in industry It has important application prospects to prepare corresponding aldehydes and amines from alkanes At present, there are few reports on the preparation of linear aldehydes from alkanes No matter the catalytic system based on light or heterogeneous, the efficiency is low, the selectivity is poor, and the by-products are easy to be generated However, the conversion of linear alkanes to linear amines has not been reported Huang Zheng, research group of State Key Laboratory of organometallic chemistry, Shanghai Institute of organic chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been committed to the study of efficient conversion of alkanes Recently, the research group has designed a homogeneous bimolecular catalytic system to realize the efficient and highly regioselective conversion of straight alkanes to straight aldehydes and amines The specific process is that alkanes first undergo alkane dehydrogenation reaction under the action of pscop iridium catalyst (angelw Chem Int ed 2014, 53, 1390) previously reported by the research group, and the internal alkene mixture generated is converted from straight alkanes to straight aldehydes and amines through subsequent isomerization hydroformylation reaction and isomerization of hydrogen amines The bimolecular catalytic system showed excellent yield and linear selectivity for the conversion of linear alkanes to linear aldehydes When ethylene is used as the hydrogen acceptor in the dehydrogenation of alkanes, the catalytic conversion number is higher (for iridium and rhodium, the ton values can reach 577 and 1110, respectively) Combined with the conversion of straight alkanes to straight silicon compounds previously reported by the research group (NAT Chem 2016, 8, 157), after one end silicification reaction and the second end carbonylation reaction, the research group realized two end functionalization reactions of alkanes for the first time The synthesis of silyl substituted linear aldehydes is an important raw material for the preparation of silicon containing surfactants and silicones By changing the ligands in the second step and adding different amines, the group realized the conversion of straight alkanes to different straight amines for the first time The related work was published recently (j.am.chem.soc 2018, 140, 4157) The first author is Tang zincic, a doctoral student of Shanghai Institute of organic sciences The above work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation, the Ministry of science and technology, the strategic leading science and technology program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (category B) and the basic research projects of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission.