Effective oxidation of 1,2-cyclooctene by oxo-vanadium(IV) tetradentate Schiff base complexes under 1 atmosphere of molecular oxygen

Abstract

Development of methods for the understanding of chemical reactivity of high-valent metal-oxo species with respect to organic substrates is important. Here we report a high yield, high TON conversion of cyclooctene using VO (Schiff base) complexes (Figure 1) as catalyst and O2 as oxidant in MeCN under mild conditions. The results show that catalytic activity increases with a decrease in the number of electron-donating groups. At higher concentration of catalyst and shorter reaction time, a low yield but high selectivity of epoxide was observed.