Electrochemical oxidations through hypervalent iodine redox catalysis

Abstract

In recent years, a growing number of oxidations that involve electrochemical regeneration of catalytic hypervalent iodine species has been developed. These transformations benefit from the combination of rich reactivity offered by hypervalent iodine compounds and sustainability advantage provided by electrocatalysis, which eliminates the need for any stoichiometric redox reagents. This review provides a systematic overview of this emerging field, covering the most abundant two-electron electrocatalysis with iodoarenes via I(I)/I(III) redox cycle, the isolated existing example of I(V)/I(VII) cycle, and a newly developed approach exploiting iodoarenes as I(I)/I(II) single-electron transfer mediators.