Metal-catalyzed asymmetric sulfoxidation, epoxidation and hydroxylation by hydrogen peroxide

The development of environmentally benign reactions is an important goal in synthetic organic chemistry and chemical engineering. However, catalytic enantioselective oxidations using transition-metal complexes are limited when the oxidant is hydrogen peroxide. The two main difficulties of using hydrogen peroxide in the presence of transition metal complexes are the homolytic cleavage generating OH radicals and the catalase reaction with formation of dioxygen. The current applications of asymmetric sulfoxidation, epoxidation, dihydroxylation of alkenes and hydroxylation will be herein reported. Use of non-heme systems will be presented. The possibility of asymmetric oxidation catalyzed by metalloporphyrins will also be discussed.