Micellar and metallomicellar systems are known as efficient catalysts for various organic transformations that are performed under aqueous conditions.[1] Commercially available and designer surfactants are well explored for such transformations in the absence or presence of suitable transition metal components. However, micelle forming (i.e. surfactant-based) metal complexes are relatively less explored in this area of research. These aspects will be discussed in the seminar but particular emphasis will be given to all the three reported studies on molybdenum-based metallomicellar systems comprising of oxidative C-C coupling of 2,6-di-tert-butylphenol developed by Scott research group[2] and chemoselective sulfoxidation/alcohol oxidation reactions on a large variety of substrates demonstrated by Chand research group.[3-4] The role of molybdenum-based metallomicellar complexes as catalysts in chemoselective sulfoxidation reactions using aqueous H2O2 as an oxidant,[3] and controlled oxidation of activated alcohol to aldehyde/ketone using molecular oxygen from bladder[4] or open air[5] under aqueous conditions are performed in our laboratory by other colleagues. In this line we have performed oxidation of aromatic alcohols to corresponding acids by further optimization of reaction conditions using one of the catalysts known in our laboratory, and collected preliminary data on desulfurization reactions using a new catalyst. These finding along with a proposal on catalyst design will be presented.
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[1] Sorella, G. L.; Strukul, G.; Scarso, A. Green Chem. 2015, 17, 644.
[2] Cull, J. E. W.; Richard, A.; Scott J. Green Chem. 2013, 15, 362.
[3] Chakravarthy, R. D.; Ramkumar, V.; Chand, D. K. Green Chem. 2014, 16, 2190.
[4] Thiruvengetam, P.; Chakravarthy, R. D.; Chand, D. K. J. Catal. 2019, 376, 123.
[5] Thiruvengetam, P.; Chand, D. K. Green Approach for Oxidation of Activated Alcohols in Water using a Molybdenum based Metallomicellar Catalyst (Indian patent application number: 201,941,024,941)