This thesis concerns the use of various potent oxidants in organic synthesis. The main focus is directed at selectively introducing trifluoromethyl groups into compounds containing double or triple bonds. All reactions proceed under mild conditions and can in most cases be performed on the bench-top. We have developed three different procedures for transformations of activated alkenes and alkynes as well as quinones. In paper I the selective introduction of a trifluoromethyl group together with an oxygen functionality to double and triple bonds is demonstrated. Paper II is focused on the related chemoselective cyanotrifluoromethylation in which a cyano group is added instead of the oxygen functionality. Paper III describes a new procedure for C–H trifluoromethylation of quinones. Our studies on the mechanistic aspects of the above reactions are described in Paper IV. In these studies we investigated the ligand and substituent effects in Cu-catalyzed reactions. Paper V is focused on a conceptually new palladium-catalyzed allylic C–H acyloxylation of olefins under oxidative conditions. The procedure uses an inexpensive, safe and environmentally benign oxidant, sodium perborate, which is activated with acetic anhydride. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Submitted.</p>

The first part of the thesis presents the reinvestigation of the synthetic and mechanistic aspects of manganese (III) acetate mediated reactions. The main concern about this subject was to perform a &cent / - acetoxylation reactions of enones and saturated systems in shorter reactions times and higher yields than the ones known in literature reproducibly. Although successful a &cent / -acetoxylation of a great variety of substrates have been reported so far, there are some problems associated with the use of Mn(OAc)3. Considering that there are not many simple methods for the direct acetoxylation of enones, optimization of Mn(OAc)3 mediated a &cent / -acetoxylation of enones and reaching its maximum potential has a great importance from a synthetic and economical point of view. In the second part of the thesis, 1,2,4-trisubstituted pyrrole derivatives were the target molecules to be synthesized. Although there are quite a number of methods available for the synthesis of pyrroles, most of them involve multistep synthetic operations which lower the overall yield. There are limited reports on the preparation of the enantiomers of pyrrole derivatives having 1-N directly linked to the stereogenic center. Thus, developing a new synthetic method for the efficient preparation of polysubstituted pyrroles without racemization still remains an attractive goal.

The first part of the thesis presents the KMnO4/ carboxylic acid/ organic solvent which is a powerful reagent for C-C bond formation, aryl coupling reactions and enone oxidation. The a&cent / -acetoxylation of enones and the a-acetoxylation of aromatic ketones were carried out with potassium permanganate and acetic acid, in which acetoxylation products were obtained in 74-96% yields. The same reaction was carried out with carboxylic acids other than acetic acid, which furnished corresponding acyloxy ketones with the same regioselectivity. For the first time, formyloxylation products were synthesized in a 61-85% yield by using formic acid. The potassium permanganate and acetic acid method was also used for aryl coupling reactions. The reaction of arylboronic acids and aryl hydrazines in benzene with potassium permanganate and acetic acid in turn furnished biaryls in a 85-96% yield. We showed that potassium permanganate/carboxylic acid/organic solvent behaves as manganese(III) acetate. In the second part of the thesis, ipso-nitration of arylboronic acids with AgNO2/ TMSCl was performed. Nitration of aromatic compounds is one of the most extensively studied reactions, and nitroaryl moieties play key roles in the physical and chemical properties of many target molecules in organic synthesis. For electrophilic nitration of aromatic compounds, a wide variety of reagents are available to date. Most of them are very strong nitrating agents and often lead to further nitration and mixture of isomers. Since most nitrating agents are oxidants, oxidation of other functional groups can also occur, giving a mixture of products. Thus, a search for milder and selective nitrating agents is a good research goal. In this work, we aimed to apply AgNO2/ TMSCl system to ipso nitration of arylboronic acids.