Georgios Vassilikogiannakis and colleagues at University of Crete, Greece, have written a very interesting emerging area on green oxidations of furans.
The reactivity of furans with the first excited state of molecular oxygen, known as singlet oxygen, was unearthed in 1967. More than 40 years later, Vassilikogiannakis et al. tell us about how this work begun, how it evolved and where we are now.
They focus on how altering the position of a pendant hydroxyl group in the furan substrate can lead to different cascade reactions that result in the synthesis of different products. The icing of the cake: this chemistry is green chemistry as the oxidant is non-toxic, leaves no toxic residues, and the reactions are atom efficient.
If you want to find out more, download this OBC review now.
Green oxidations of furans—initiated by molecular oxygen—that give key natural product motifs
Tamsyn Montagnon, Dimitris Noutsias, Ioanna Alexopoulou, Maria Tofi and Georgios Vassilikogiannakis
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011,
DOI: 10.1039/C0OB00952K, Emerging Area
