3-chloroperoxybenzoic acid is white powdery crystals. Melting point is 92-94°C (decomposed). It is almost insoluble in water, but soluble in ethanol, ethers, chloroform, and dichloroethane. It is thermally stable and has an annual decomposition rate of less than 1% at room temperature. The decomposition rate is accelerated in the liquid state. 3-Chloroperbenzoic acid is sensitive to heat and shock, and pure solid. 3-Chloroperbenzoic acid is flammable and potentially explosive. It contains a weak –O–O– bond and a nucleophilic OH group, that makes it versatile oxidative and easily breakable.
3-Chloroperoxybenzoic acid is commonly used in double bond epoxidation, nitridation, cyclization, Baeyer-Villiger oxidation, and N-oxidation. It can also be used as an oxidant for fine chemicals such as synthetic medicine and pesticides. It is also sometimes used as a bleaching agent [1-6].
• Used in cyclization reaction, Baeyer-Villiger reaction, N-oxidation reaction and S-oxidation reaction.
• Used as an oxidant for fine chemical products such as synthetic medicine and pesticides.
• Used as oxidant and bleach.
• As a good electrophilic reagent, it can react with many functional groups and can oxidize olefins, enol silyl ethers, furans, sulfides, selenides and amino compounds.
Effective oxidant for epoxidizing di-, tri-, and tetra-substituted olefins.
3-Chloroperoxybenzoic acid is a strong oxidizing agent used in the oxidation reactions such as aldehydes and ketones to esters (Bayer-Villiger-Oxidation), olefines to epoxides, sulfides to sulfoxides and sulfones, and amines to nitroalkanes, N-oxides.
ChEBI: 3-chloroperbenzoic acid is a peroxy acid and a member of monochlorobenzenes.
3-Chloroperoxybenzoic acid (MCPBA) is one of the most popular oxidation reagent in organic synthesis, because of its outstanding performance in terms of:
reactivity, combined with reducing the number of reaction steps in classical synthetic routes,
regio- and stereoselectivity,
protection of functional groups mostly not required,
high purity and yields.
Its literature covers a huge area of different syntheses and below reaction equations just can be a brief overview of its interesting applications:
3-Chloroperoxybenzoic acid is sensitive to heat. Storage of 3-Chloroperoxybenzoic acid must be done so with stringent temperature control measures. It's explosion hazard is also mitigated by mixing the peroxide in a solvent slurry.
May explode from heat, shock, friction or contamination. May ignite combustibles (wood, paper, oil, clothing, etc.). May be ignited by heat, sparks or flames.
Recrystallise MCPBA from CH2Cl2 [Traylor & Mikztal J Am Chem Soc 109 2770 1987]. Peracid of 99+% purity can be obtained by washing commercial 85% material with phosphate buffer pH 7.5 and drying the residue under reduced pressure. Alternatively the peracid can be freed from m-chlorobenzoic acid by dissolving 50g/L of *benzene and washing with an aqueous solution buffered at pH 7.4 (NaH2PO4/NaOH) (5 x 100mL). The organic layer is dried over MgSO4 and carefully evaporated under vacuum. Necessary care should be taken in case of EXPLOSION. The solid is recrystallised twice from CH2Cl2/Et2O and stored at 0o in a plastic container as glass catalyses the decomposition of the peracid. The acid is assayed iodometrically. [Schwartz & Blumbrgs J Org Chem 29 1976 1964, Bortolini et al. J Org Chem 52 5093 1987, McDonald et al. Org Synth Coll Vol VI 276 1988, Beilstein 9 IV 972.]
