Vanadium-Catalyzed Oxidation of Terminal Olefin with Molecular Oxygen: Competing Products between Epoxide and Aldehyde

This work may give an understanding of why epoxide and aldehyde are easily generated in olefin oxidation by molecular oxygen when vanadium phenoxyimine complex was employed as a catalyst. This work would also explain why oxetane and dioxetane were harder to produce, although a radical tautomerism may allow the formation of such products.