Safe oxidation of sulfides into sulfoxides using SIBX

SIBX is a stabilized (i.e., nonexplosive) formulation of the lambda(5)-iodane 2-iodoxybenzoic acid IBX that can be used as a suspension in various organic solvents to oxidize safely sulfides into sulfoxides. Most yields are comparable to those obtained using IBX or other iodanes such as PhIO and PhIO2. An asymmetric version of this SIBX-mediated sulfoxidation was performed in high chemical yield and moderate enantioselectivity by simple addition of an external chiral source. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.