Introducing selective electro-oxidation of aryl and alkyl sulfides protocol in a novel environmentally friendly media

Abstract

Since derived products from the oxidation of sulfides are vital for pharmaceutical companies, in this paper, electro-oxidation of aryl and alkyl sulfides was investigated on the glassy carbon electrode (GC) by electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). To choose the best electrolyte, electro-oxidation of organic sulfides was investigated in different solutions such as ethanol, propanol, acetone, acetonitrile, and acetic acid. Among them, acetic acid not only did not have the pesky peak but also produced the largest oxidation current with increasing sulfide. In the following, studies were carried out to optimize the percentage of acetic acid and sodium hydroxide solution as a supporting electrolyte and oxygen source, which eventually a mixture of 85:15 acetic acid and solution of 1 M NaOH had the best oxidation efficiency. It should be noted, this effective media is introduced and reported for the first time. Then, the electro-oxidation of several sulfides were investigated in the optimized electrolyte. Kinetic studies were performed on the introduced system and several kinetic data were determined for methyl phenyl sulfide electrochemical oxidation. Finally, a mechanism for the electro-oxidation of sulfide was proposed.