Natural gallic acid catalyzed aerobic oxidative coupling with the assistance of MnCO3 for synthesis of disulfanes in water

The formation of S-S bonds has great significance and value in synthetic chemistry and bioscience. To pursue a sustainable approach for such a synthesis, an aerobic oxidative coupling method for the efficient preparation of organic disulfanes, using a low-toxic natural gallic acid as an organocatalyst, inexpensive MnCO3 as a cocatalyst, O-2 as the terminal oxidant and water as the solvent, has been successfully developed. Such metal-organic cooperative catalytic protocol provided an access to various symmetrical and unsymmetrical disulfanes in up to 99% yield. Gram scale synthesis with practical convenience and low loading of catalysts further illustrates the practicability of our method.