Concave reagents: Part 40 - The copper(II) complex of a concave reagent as a selective catalyst for ester methanolysis

We have shown that the Cu-II complexes of the concave ligand 1 and its model compound 2 are efficient catalysts of ester methanolysis under conditions close to neutrality. Turnover catalysis without product inhibition was demonstrated by the clean first-order release of a greater than stoichiometric amount of product. Compared with background methanolysis, the metal catalysts give greater rate accelerations for methyl acetate methanolysis than for the p-nitrophenyl acetate methanolysis.