Electrophilic Selenium Catalysis with Electrophilic N-F Reagents as the Oxidants

Fabrication of Se/C using carbohydrates as biomass starting materials: an efficient catalyst for regiospecific epoxidation of β-ionone with ultrahigh turnover numbers

Fabrication of Se/C catalyst from glucose as the biomass starting materials was reported for the first time, affording an efficient and regiospecific epoxidation of β-ionone.

Celebrating Two Centuries of Research in Selenium Chemistry: State of the Art and New Prospective

In 2017, the 200th anniversary of the discovery of selenium was celebrated. In 1817, the Swedish chemists, Berzelius and Gahn, on roasting 200 kg of sulfur from a pyrite from the Falun mine, obtained about 3 g of a precipitate that they first wrongly identified as tellurium. Berzelius doubted this result and repeated the analysis some months later realizing that a new element was in his hands and he named this element Selenium (Greek: Selene, moon) in consideration of its resemblance to Tellurium (Latin: Tellus, earth). Several events were organized in the year for this special celebration and this Special Issue would like to be an additional contribution to the success of a research that, especially during the last decades, rapidly grew in different fields: synthesis, medicinal chemistry, biology, material, and environment. These studies are strongly characterized by multi- and interdisciplinary connections, and, for this reason, we collected here contributions coming from different areas and disciplines, not exclusively synthetic organic chemistry.

Combination of Lewis Basic Selenium Catalysis and Redox Selenium Chemistry: Synthesis of Trifluoromethylthiolated Tertiary Alcohols with Alkenes

A new and efficient method for diaryl selenide catalyzed vicinal CF₃S hydroxylation of 1,1-multisubstitued alkenes has been developed. Various trifluoromethylthiolated tertiary alcohols could be readily synthesized under mild conditions. This method is also effective for the intramolecular cyclization of alkenes tethered by carboxylic acid, hydroxy, sulfamide, or ester groups and is associated with the introduction of a CF₃S group. Mechanistic studies have revealed that the pathway involves a redox cycle between Se(II) and Se(IV) and Lewis basic selenium catalysis.