Electrochemical epoxidation of alkene with high faradaic efficiencies using water as an oxygen source

Abstract

Epoxides are important synthetic intermediates due to their high propensity to undergo ring-opening to give a variety of products with useful functional groups. In this study, we disclose a non-halide-mediated electrochemical epoxidation of alkenes to form epoxides using water as an oxygen source. This method catalyzed by (TMP)MnCl (TMP = tetramesitylporphyrin) exhibits remarkable efficiency, enabling the epoxidation of both aromatic and aliphatic alkenes with excellent faradaic efficiencies (up to 89%). Preliminary mechanistic studies suggest the Mn^VO species generated from single electron oxidations serves as the key intermediate for the epoxidation reaction.