Activation of dioxygen by copper complexes in water for the selective oxidation/oxygenation of organic substrates

有机底物如环己烷的选择性氧化在化学工业和实验室中是极其重要的。到目前为止，许多这些反应都是在有机溶剂中进行的，这些溶剂通常是有毒的或对环境有害的氧化剂和/或昂贵的贵金属催化剂。此外，大多数时候需要在更高的温度和压力下进行这些反应。相反，金属酶，通常在活性位点有铁或铜离子的单加氧酶，能够在环境条件下在空气中的二氧作为氧化剂的水中进行这些反应。模型化合物已被用于模拟这些酶的反应活性，然而，到目前为止，氧化/氧化反应主要是在有机溶剂中进行的。对于工业应用，存在有机溶剂和二氧形成爆炸性混合物的危险，这可能导致火灾甚至爆炸。在这个项目中，铜配合物应该以这样一种方式进行修饰，使有机底物在水中以双氧作为唯一氧化剂进行氧化/氧化反应成为可能。

Selective oxidations of organic substrates such as e. g. cyclohexane are extremely important in chemical industry and in the laboratory. Up to now many of these reactions are performed in organic solvents applying oxidants that often are toxic or bad for the environment and/or expensive catalysts based on noble metals. Furthermore, most of the time it is necessary to run these reactions at higher temperatures and pressures. In contrast metalloenzymes, often monooxygenases with iron or copper ions at the active site are capable to perform these reactions under ambient conditions in water with dioxygen from air as an oxidant. Model compounds have been applied to mimic the reactivity of these enzymes, however, so far the oxidation/oxygenation reactions mainly were performed in organic solvents. For applications in industry there is the danger of the formation of explosive mixtures of organic solvents and dioxygen, that can lead to a fire or even an explosion. In this project copper complexes should be modified in such a way that it will be possible to perform oxidation/oxygenation reactions of organic substrates in water with dioxygen as the sole oxidant.