Overcoming Catalyst Decomposition in Acrylate Metathesis: Polyphenol Resins as Enabling Agents for PCy<sub>3</sub>-Stabilized Metathesis Catalysts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Phosphine-stabilized metathesis catalysts are among the most popular and widely used catalysts in organic synthesis. The second-generation Grubbs catalyst GII, in particular, dominates synthetic applications of olefin metathesis. This is commonly true even for reactions that are fundamentally incompatible with free PCy3, which is released upon entry of GII into the catalytic cycle. A leading example is cross-metathesis with electron-deficient olefins such as acrylates, for which yields are seriously degraded by a deleterious side reaction involving attack of free PCy3 on the acrylate olefin, and production of an enolate anion that decomposes the active catalyst. Here we describe a simple, powerful means of upgrading the performance of GII and its indenylidene analogue M2 to levels matching or exceeding that of the important, but more costly, phosphine-free Hoveyda catalyst HII. Key to this improvement is carrying out the reaction in the presence of a phenol-functionalized polymer resin. We demonstrate that, at standard catalyst loadings (which correspond to low concentrations of PCy3), the beneficial effect of phenol arises not from protonation of PCy3 itself, but from protonation of the enolate, thereby converting this aggressive base into an innocuous phosphonium salt. The methodology is showcased in the demanding cross-metathesis of the renewable phenylpropanoid trans-anethole with 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (an efficient route to the high-value antioxidant octylmethoxycinnamate, an active ingredient in sunscreen formulations with the tradename Octinoxate), as well as methyl acrylate, a ubiquitous and more sterically accessible coupling partner. Experiments with water-saturated toluene indicate that water cannot be substituted for the resin as a sacrificial proton donor, such treatment resulting in drastically reduced productivity. Control experiments involving macrocyclization indicate that the resin has an additional protective function beyond enolate quenching, potentially due to hydrogen bonding of polar contaminants present as impurities in the reagents or reaction medium.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".