Oxidative cleavage of vic-diols catalyzed by manganese (III) complexes in ionic liquids

The oxidative cleavage of vicinal diols allows the selective oxidation of diols in order to obtain aldehydes or ketones. In this work we present a novel catalytic system based on MnIII(salen) complexes dissolved in ionic liquids that allows high efficiency with low environmental impact in the oxidative cleavage of ethyleneglycol, pinacol, benzopinacol and hydrobenzoin. The use of ionic liquids in this reaction shows a positive effect of the solvent in the efficiency of the MnIII catalysts (increase of the yield in ionic liquids: 10–60%).