Alwar Ramani

By Alwar Ramani, Suresh Iyer and Murugesan Muthu

With the invention of ionic liquids, synthetic chemistry reached a new arena towards the transition metal catalyzed reactions in the syntheses of fine, specialty, agricultural, commodity, fragrant chemicals and building blocks. Inside the ionic liquid matrix, the transition metal catalysts, when immobilized, offer a valuable solution in terms of heterogenization. This technology offers high level of recyclability without loss of activity and improves the turnover number with high selectivity. Synthetic chemists, chemical engineers and technologists continue their efforts to recover and recycle the transition metal catalysts through various methodologies to convert the processes cost effective. The processes that are reported in the literature reveals that the ionic liquids by virtue of their inertness coupled with ability to retain the catalytic materials provide an excellent solution in terms of high levels of recovery and recyclability. This chapter presents a short account on the recent development in the transition metal catalyzed reactions in ionic liquid systems where both the solvent and the catalyst were recycled and reused without any emission of volatile materials.

Part of the book: Solvents, Ionic Liquids and Solvent Effects

By Alwar Ramani, Shobha Waghmode and Suresh Iyer

The chemistry of aldehydes and resembling chromophores portraits a natural tendency to undergo chemical reactions through nucleophilic reagents, owing to the polarization arising from the electronegativity of oxygen atom, and they also can enolize as a result of the acidic nature of the α-hydrogen of the carbonyl functional group; thereby the C▬C bond forming reactions can be attained either intra- or intermolecularly. Carbonyl addition reactions, enolate chemistry coupled with their capability to undergo [2+2] cycloaddition reactions, and the chemistry of carbonyl compounds are being mind-numbingly exploited in the design and process development of industrially, commercially, pharmacologically, and biologically value-added compounds. Ultimately abundant name reactions were registered, and many novel reactions endlessly appear; of late, prodigious development has been reported under the heading of visible-light photocatalysis (VLPC). Fascinatingly, VLPC has opened a new domain in the synthetic organic chemistry, and this domain paves the way to access broad spectrum of organic compounds with the ease of operations. In this chapter the chemistry of carbonyls by VPLC is briefly presented, which is comprising of not only functional group transformations but also asymmetric syntheses of complex organic compounds.

Part of the book: Photophysics, Photochemical and Substitution Reactions