Synthesis of water-soluble copper(II) complexes for the oxidation of catechol

ORGN 580

Moses G. Gichinga, gichimg@auburn.edu, Brennan W. Cooper, and Susanne Striegler, susanne.striegler@auburn.edu. Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Auburn University, 179 Chemistry Building, Auburn, AL 36849
Water is an attractive environmentally benign solvent and due to solubility reasons mandatory for the transformation of underivatized biomolecules. Avoiding the typical time-consuming, waste generating protection and deprotection steps, regioselective transformation of highly water-soluble biomolecules is targeted. Towards this end, incorporation of water-soluble substituents into the ligand backbone of a transition metal catalyst appears a promising strategy. We therefore chose the oxidation of catechol derivatives as model reaction for the catalyst design and report herein the recent achievements regarding the synthesis of new ligands, their metal complexes and initial results on catalytic activity.