There’s Gold in Them
There Reactions

I was always taught that gold was an unreactive metal and not much use in catalytic reactions. But that was in the sixties. In 1973 Bond (not James! nor anything to do with Goldfinger) reported that a supported gold catalyst could be used in the hydrogenation of olefins and more than 10 years later the groups of Haruta and, independently, Hutchings showed that gold catalysts could be used in the low temperature oxidation of CO and in the hydrochlorination of acetylene to vinyl chloride. For the first time, these studies showed that gold was the preferred catalyst for these reactions and destroyed the myth of the poor activity of gold. This area has become a dynamic hot spot in catalysis research and has resulted in the European Union Research Training Network AURICAT.

A recent review describes exactly how useful gold catalysts can be. The review, written by two of the most active researchers in the field, Prof Hashmi from University of Stuttgart and Prof Hutchins at the University of Cardiff, covers both heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. (A S K Hashmi and G J Hutchins, Angew Chem Int Ed, 2006, 45, 7896-7936).

• Trevor Laird

Some interesting transformations are shown in the scheme featured in the full downloadable newsletter.

 

New Method of Making Tertiary Amines

Most modern chemists wishing to make aromatic tertiary amines will try the Buchwald Hartwig methodologies involving displacement of a halide or other leaving group by an amine under palladium or copper catalysis. more>

Pd-Catalysed Cyanation of Aryl Halides

The cyanation of aryl halides using palladium catalysis is a powerful and well documented transformation which on the face of it should be quite robust, but in fact still proves problematic in many cases. more>

Convenient conditions for conversion of primary amides to nitriles

Taiwanese chemists* have reported simple and mild conditions for the dehydration of primary amides to nitriles, using ethyl chlorophosphate and base: more>

Use of an Ionic Liquid to Aid Conversion and Reaction Work Up

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Learning to Read or Reading to Learn?

Most chemists find it hard to keep up with the literature and reading journals often comes at the bottom of the pile (literally with hard-copy journals) when it comes to work priorities. However for a chemist to be truly innovative it is vitally important to know the latest advances in the subject. more>

 

The periodic table as you have never seen it before!

www.beeriodic.com

 

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