Simple, cheap but highly efficient organo catalysts for the fixation of CO2 on propargylic alcohols

In the last years, many efforts have been devoted to the valorisation of CO2 as an abundant and renewable C1 building block for cyclic carbonate synthesis. Many synthetic routes have been proposed to convert CO2 into five or six-membered cyclic carbonates finding applications as green solvent, electrolytes for Li-ion batteries, intermediates for organic synthesis, monomers for the production of polycarbonates or isocyanate-free synthesis of poly(hydroxyrethane)s, etc. Although the 100% atom economy synthesis of 5-membered cyclic carbonates from CO2 and epoxides/oxetanes has been widely reported in the literature, the carboxylative coupling of CO2 with alkynols remains unexplored. Transition metal-based complexes, organic bases (guanidine, amidine, phosphine), N-heterocyclic carbenes or olefins, and K2CO3 have been proposed as catalysts. However they generally present sufficient activity at high pressure and/or temperature or require a high catalyst loading. Additionally some of them are toxic and/or sensitive to hydrolysis or oxidation.
In this work, we designed novel, cheap, easily customizable and highly efficient organocatalysts for the synthesis of cyclic α-methylene carbonates from CO2 and alkynols. Kinetics of the CO2/alkynol coupling reaction were followed by Raman spectroscopy with organocatalysts of different structures, and the best candidate was identified. The main parameters that influenced the system reactivity and selectivity have been identified and will be presented in this poster.