Synthesis of -unsaturated compounds by decarboxylative cross-coupling reaction catalyzed by iron-based covalent organic frameworks

In the past two decades iron catalysis have attracted much attention, among other characteristics, due to iron spans formal oxidation states from –II to +VI, binds well to heteroatom based ligands which allows to avoid phosphine ligands and permits the construction of homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts.1-2 However, much attention had been focused on homogeneous iron-catalytic systems and less on heterogeneous systems,3 therefore, in this work we use TPB-DMTP-COF which is a crystalline mesoporous material with surface area of 1200 m2/g and pore width of 34 Å built from organic building blocks to immobilize FeCl3.6H2O in the pore walls heteroatoms.4-5 FeCl3@TPB-DMTP-COF catalyst showed good to excellent catalytic activity and short reaction time in the cross-coupling decarboxylative oxidation of cinnamic acids for the obtaining of –unsaturated derivatives in 28 to 80% chemical yield. This new heterogeneous catalyst exhibited high thermal and chemical stability allowing it use for several catalytic cycles.