Abstract
Oxygen-containing functional groups are nearly ubiquitous in complex small molecules. The installation of multiple C–O bonds by the concurrent oxygenation of contiguous C–H bonds in a selective fashion would be highly desirable but has largely been the purview of biosynthesis. Multiple, concurrent C–H bond oxygenation reactions by synthetic means presents a challenge1,2,3,4,5,6, particularly because of the risk of overoxidation. Here we report the selective oxygenation of two or three contiguous C–H bonds by dehydrogenation and oxygenation, enabling the conversion of simple alkylarenes or trifluoroacetamides to their corresponding di- or triacetoxylates. The method achieves such transformations by the repeated operation of a potent oxidative catalyst, but under conditions that are sufficiently selective to avoid destructive overoxidation. These reactions are achieved using electrophotocatalysis7, a process that harnesses the energy of both light and electricity to promote chemical reactions. Notably, the judicious choice of acid allows for the selective synthesis of either di- or trioxygenated products.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information.
References
Company, A. & Costas, M. Applied Homogeneous Catalysis with Organometallic Compounds: A Comprehensive Handbook 3rd edn (Wiley, 2018).
Irie, R. Oxidation: C-O bond formation by C-H activation. Compr. Chirality 5, 36–68 (2012).
Que, L. Jr & Tolman, W. B. Biologically inspired oxidation catalysis. Nature 455, 333–340 (2008).
Chen, M. S. & White, M. C. A predictably selective aliphatic C-H oxidation reaction for complex molecule synthesis. Science 318, 783–787 (2007).
Chen, M. S. & White, M. C. Combined effects on selectivity in Fe-catalyzed methylene oxidation. Science 327, 566–571 (2010).
Horn, E. J. et al. Scalable and sustainable electrochemical allylic C-H oxidation. Nature 533, 71–81 (2016).
Huang, H., Steiniger, K. A. & Lambert, T. H. Electrophotocatalysis: combining light and electricity to catalyze reactions. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 144, 12567–12583 (2022).
Paddon, C. J. et al. High-level semi-synthetic production of the potent antimalarial artemisinin. Nature 496, 528–532 (2013).
White, M. C. & Zhao, J. Aliphatic C-H oxidations for late-stage functionalization. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 13988–14009 (2018).
Huang, X. & Groves, J. T. Beyond ferryl-mediated hydroxylation: 40 years of the rebound mechanism and C-H activation. J. Biol. Inorg. Chem. 22, 185–207 (2017).
Crandall, J. K. et al. Dimethyldioxirane (DDO) in Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis (ed. Charente, A. B.) (Wiley, 2022).
Das, S., Incarvito, C. D., Crabtree, R. H. & Brudvig, G. W. Molecular recognition in the selective oxygenation of saturated C-H bonds by a dimanganese catalyst. Science 312, 1941–1943 (2006).
Kawamata, Y. et al. Scalable, electrochemical oxidation of unactivated C–H bonds. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139, 7448–7451 (2017).
Moutet, J. C. & Reverdy, G. Photochemistry of cation radicals in solution-photoinduced electron-transfer reactions between alcohols and the N,N,N’,N’-tetraphenyl-para-phenylenediamine cation radical. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Comm. 12, 654–655 (1982).
Scheffold, R. & Orlinski, R. Carbon-carbon bond formation by light-assisted B-12 catalysis-nucleophilic acylation of Michael olefins. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 105, 7200–7202 (1983).
Barham, J. P. & König, B. Synthetic photoelectrochemistry. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 59, 11732–11747 (2020).
Huang, H. et al. Electrophotocatalysis with a trisaminocyclopropenium radical dication. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 58, 13318–13322 (2019).
Huang, H., Strater, Z. M. & Lambert, T. H. Electrophotocatalytic C-H functionalization of ethers with high regioselectivity. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 1698–1703 (2020).
Huang, H. & Lambert, T. H. Electrophotocatalytic acetoxyhydroxylation of aryl olefins. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 143, 7247–7252 (2021).
Shen, T. & Lambert, T. H. Electrophotocatalytic diamination of vicinal C–H bonds. Science 371, 620–626 (2021).
Shen, T. & Lambert, T. H. C-H amination via electrophotocatalytic Ritter-type reaction. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 143, 8597–8602 (2021).
Huang, H. & Lambert, T. H. Electrophotocatalytic SNAr reactions of unactivated aryl fluorides at ambient temperature and without base. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 59, 658–662 (2020).
Wang, F. & Stahl, S. S. Merging photochemistry with electrochemistry: functional-group tolerant electrochemical amination of C(sp3)-H bonds. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 58, 6385–6390 (2019).
Yan, H., Hou, Z.-W. & Xu, H.-C. Photoelectrochemical C-H alkylation of heteroarenes with organotrifluoroborates. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 58, 4592–4595 (2019).
Zhang, L. et al. Photoelectrocatalytic arene C-H amination. Nat. Catal. 2, 366–373 (2019).
Zhang, W., Carpenter, K. L. & Lin, S. Electrochemistry broadens the scope of flavin photocatalysis: photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of unactivated alcohols. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 59, 409–417 (2020).
Niu, L. et al. Manganese-catalyzed oxidative azidation of C(sp3)-H bonds under electrophotocatalytic conditions. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 17693–17702 (2020).
Kim, H., Kim, H., Lambert, T. H. & Lin, S. Reductive electrophotocatalysis: merging electricity and light to achieve extreme reduction potentials. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 2087–2092 (2020).
Cowper, N. G. W., Chernowsky, C. P., Williams, O. P. & Wickens, Z. K. Potent reductants via electron-primed photoredox catalysis: unlocking aryl chlorides for radical coupling. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 2093–2099 (2020).
Qiu, Y., Scheremetjew, A., Finger, L. H. & Ackermann, L. Electrophotocatalytic undirected C-H trifluoromethylations of (het)arenes. Chemistry 26, 3241–3246 (2020).
Yoshida, J.-i, Kataoka, K., Horcajada, R. & Nagaki, A. Modern strategies in electroorganic synthesis. Chem. Rev. 108, 2265–2299 (2008).
Francke, R. & Little, R. D. Redox catalysis in organic electrosynthesis: basic principles and recent developments. Chem. Soc. Rev. 43, 2492–2521 (2014).
Yan, M., Kawamata, Y. & Baran, P. S. Synthetic organic electrochemical methods since 2000: on the verge of a renaissance. Chem. Rev. 117, 13230–13319 (2017).
Moeller, K. D. Using physical organic chemistry to shape the course of electrochemical reactions. Chem. Rev. 118, 4817–4833 (2018).
Shi, S.-H., Liang, Y. & Jiao, N. Electrochemical oxidation induced selective C-C bond cleavage. Chem. Rev. 121, 485–505 (2021).
Ghosh, A. K. et al. Highly selective and potent human β-secretase 2 (BACE2) inhibitors against type 2 diabetes: design, synthesis, X-ray structure and structure–activity relationship studies. ChemMedChem 14, 545–560 (2019).
Furukubo, S., Moriyama, N., Onomura, O. & Matsumura, Y. Stereoselective synthesis of azasugars by electrochemical oxidation. Tetrahedron Lett. 45, 8177–8181 (2004).
Beal, H. E. & Horenstein, N. A. Comparative genomic analysis of azasugar biosynthesis. AMB Express 11, 120 (2021).
Chambers, M. S. et al. Spiropiperidines as high-affinity, selective σ ligands. J. Med. Chem. 35, 2033–2039 (1992).
Lund, B. W. et al. Discovery of a potent, orally available, and isoform-selective retinoic acid β2 receptor agonist. J. Med. Chem. 48, 7517–7519 (2005).
Acetti, D., Brenna, E., Fuganti, C., Gatti, F. G. & Serra, S. Enzyme-catalysed approach to the preparation of triazole antifungals: synthesis of (-)-genaconazole. Tetrahedron Asymmetry 20, 2413–2420 (2009).
Frank, R. et al. Substituted pyrazolyl-based carboxamide and urea derivatives bearing a phenyl moiety substituted with an O-containing group as vanilloid receptor ligands. Patent WO 2013068461A1 (2013).
Acknowledgements
Funding for this work was provided by the National Institutes of Health (no. R35GM127135 to T.H.L.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 22171046 to K.-Y.Y.). We thank X.-X. Li, X. He, Y. Yu and Z. Shi from Fuzhou University for their help with X-ray single-crystal analysis. We also thank S. Liao and Q. Song from Fuzhou University for their help with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis. We thank I. Keresztes (Cornell University), J. Cheng and C. Xu (both from Fuzhou University) for their help with two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
T.H.L. conceived of and directed the project and prepared the manuscript. T.H.L., T.S. and K.-Y.Y. designed experiments. T.S. and Y.-L.L. performed experiments. Y.-L.L. synthesized key substrates. T.S. performed all reactions and collected and analysed data.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Analytical methods, experimental tips, mechanistic data, challenging substrates, compound characterization, nuclear magnetic resonance spectra and X-ray data analysis.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Shen, T., Li, YL., Ye, KY. et al. Electrophotocatalytic oxygenation of multiple adjacent C–H bonds. Nature 614, 275–280 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05608-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05608-x
This article is cited by
-
Nickel-electrocatalysed C(sp3)–C(sp3) cross-coupling of unactivated alkyl halides
Nature Catalysis (2024)
-
Photoelectrochemically driven iron-catalysed C(sp3)−H borylation of alkanes
Nature Synthesis (2024)
-
Electrochemical radical-polar crossover: a radical approach to polar chemistry
Science China Chemistry (2024)
-
Photoelectrochemical oxidative C(sp3)−H borylation of unactivated hydrocarbons
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Selective C(sp3)–H arylation/alkylation of alkanes enabled by paired electrocatalysis
Nature Communications (2023)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.