Cyclopropanes and hypervalent iodine reagents: high energy compounds for applications in synthesis and catalysis.

One of the major challenges faced by organic chemistry is the efficient synthesis of increasingly complex molecules. Since October 2007, the Laboratory of Catalysis and Organic Synthesis (LCSO) at EPFL has been working on the development of catalytic reactions based on the Umpolung of the innate reactivity of functional groups. Electrophilic acetylene synthons have been developed using the exceptional properties of ethynyl benziodoxolone (EBX) hypervalent iodine reagents for the alkynylation of heterocycles and olefins. The obtained acetylenes are important building blocks for organic chemistry, material sciences and chemical biology. The ring-strain energy of donor-acceptor cyclopropanes was then used in the first catalytic formal homo-Nazarov cyclization. In the case of aminocyclopropanes, the method could be applied in the synthesis of the alkaloids aspidospermidine and goniomitine. The developed methods are expected to have a broad potential for the synthesis and functionalization of complex organic molecules, including carbocycles and heterocycles.

Benziodoxole-based hypervalent iodine reagents for atom-transfer reactions.

In the last decades, hypervalent iodine reagents have raised from chemical curiosities to mainstream reagents in organic synthesis. The use of benziodoxole-derived reagents has been especially successful in oxidation methods, whereas non-cyclic iodinanes have been used both for oxidation and atom-transfer reactions. On the other hand, the exceptional properties of benziodoxole reagents for atom-transfer reactions have only started to attract the attention of the synthetic community more recently. In this review, progress in the use of these compounds for C-X and C-C bond formations will be presented. In particular, recent breakthroughs in trifluoromethylation and alkynylation reactions have been realized since 2006 based on benziodoxole-derived reagents and these results are the main focus of this article.