Recent Developments in the Synthesis of Cyclic Carbonates from Epoxides and CO2

• Published in: Topics in current chemistry (2016) Vol. 375; no. 3
• Main Authors: Büttner, Hendrik, Longwitz, Lars, Steinbauer, Johannes, Wulf, Christoph, Werner, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.06.2017
• Subjects: Chemical Transformations of Carbon Dioxide; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Life Sciences; Materials Science; Molecular Medicine; Physics; Review; Carbon dioxide; Cyclic carbonates; Transition metal catalysis; CO; Organocatalysis; 1,3-Dioxolan-2-one; Homogeneous catalysis; Epoxide; Ionic liquids; Main group metal catalysis; Green chemistry; Catalysis; Onium salts
• ISSN: 2365-0869; 2364-8961
• DOI: 10.1007/s41061-017-0136-5

The use of CO 2 as a C1 building block will be of essential importance in the future. In this context the synthesis of cyclic carbonates from epoxides and CO 2 gained great attention recently. These products are valuable compounds in a variety of chemical fields. The development of new catalysts and catalytic systems for this atom-economic, scalable, and industrially relevant reaction is a highly active research field. Over the past 17 years great advances have been made in this area of research. This chapter covers the survey of the important known classes of homogeneous catalysts for the addition of CO 2 to epoxides. Besides pioneering work, recent developments and procedures that allow this transformation under mild reaction conditions (reaction temperatures of ≤100 °C and/or CO 2 pressures of 0.1 MPa) are especially emphasized.