Abstract

Carbon dioxide is an abundant and renewable greenhouse gas, so chemists would like to find more opportunities to use it in organic synthesis. One potential approach is to turn it into formaldehyde, a precursor for many industrially produced chemicals. Now, researchers have designed a method to produce formaldehyde from CO2 by creating an intermediate compound that is shelf stable and quickly releases formaldehyde upon treatment at room temperature (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b08342). Gerard Parkin of Columbia University and colleagues use a magnesium-based catalyst to produce a bis(silyl)acetal, H2C(OSiPh3)2, from CO2 and triphenylsilane, Ph3SiH. The bis(silyl)acetal remained stable and didn’t decompose, even after being stored in a vial for 60 days. By adding cesium fluoride to the compound at room temperature, “we could activate the molecule and convert it to formaldehyde instantaneously,” Parkin says. The researchers also demonstrated how to isotopically label organic molecules with the...

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