K. Takaki, Jun Yamamoto, K. Komeyama
Dec 10, 2004
Citations
0
Influential Citations
44
Citations
Journal
Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan
Abstract
Visible light irradiation of alkanes in acetonitrile with CuCl 2 and FeCl 3 catalysts under atmospheric dioxygen gave the corresponding alcohols and ketones effectively; in these reactions, the total selectivity of the products did not decrease so much with increase of alkane conversion. For example, cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone were formed with ca. 70% selectivity at 50% conversion, because overoxidation of the products took place more slowly than cyclohexane oxidation. The relative reactivity values of cycloalkanes increased as their ring-sizes decreased. In the oxidation of hexane, the reactivity ratio of C 1 -/C 2 -/C 3 -H was found to be 1.0/1.4/1.8 with CuCl 2 and 1.0/4.6/6.6 with FeCl 3 , respectively. Toluene and diphenylmethane were more reactive than cyclohexane with FeCl 3 , as expected, whereas the alkane was oxidized faster than the benzylic compounds in the separate reaction with CuCl 2 . Moreover, the alkane oxidation could be comparably performed by sunlight instead of an artificial lamp.