Marvin Parasram, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at New York University, will deliver a seminar entitled, "Anaerobic Oxygen Atom Transfer Reactions Promoted by Photoexcited Nitroarenes." Hosted by Tianning Diao.
In-person, or join via zoom at: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/97155343805
For more information about Marvin Parasram, click here.
Abstract: Oxygen-atom enriched motifs are core structures in therapeutic natural products and pharmaceuticals. While powerful synthetic methods have been reported to enable the transfer of oxygen atom units to organic compounds, most approaches require exogenous oxidants and employ costly transition metals. Our laboratory has developed novel approaches for the heteroatom transfer of oxygen atom units from economical nitroarenes under photoirradiation. Our contributions involve the cleavage of alkenes leading to valuable carbonyl derivatives and direct C–H oxidation of hydrocarbons via anaerobic oxygen-atom transfer from photoexcited nitroarenes. Mechanistic studies reveal that the nitroarene reactant is the sole photo-absorbing species and leads to the formation of a triplet nitroarene biradical intermediate that is responsible for the oxygen-atom transfer event. Overall, this work demonstrates that the sui generis reactivity of photoexcited nitroarenes can enable synthetically useful oxygen-atom incorporation reactions in a mild, practical, and sustainable manner.
