Copper(II)-based oxidation catalysts using tethered bis-amino acid ligands

CHED 1157

Tracy J. Kurtz and Jeffrey J. Bodwin, bodwin@mnstate.edu. Department of Chemistry, Minnesota State University Moorhead, 1104 7th Avenue South, Moorhead, MN 56563
Amino acids offer a very attractive ligand precursor because of the available variety of side-chains and inexpensive resolved chiral centers. These ligand systems are also potentially more directly analogous to biological copper(II)-containing metalloenzymes such as galactose oxidase due to their biologically relevant ligating groups. Our current research is directed toward the development of a copper(II)-based oxidation catalyst that can be incorporated into a porous metal-organic framework (pMOF). These pMOF catalysts would offer the advantages of some metal- and/or ligand-based tunability of the system while providing a heterogeneous catalyst to facilitate product recovery and cleanup. This work describes copper(II) complexes of bis-(amido acid) ligands and their initial use in the oxidation of veratryl alcohol (3,4-dimethoxybenzyl alcohol) to the corresponding aldehyde using dioxygen as the formal oxidant.