Organic Chemistry: Concepts and Applications - Headley Allan D. 2020

Oxidation Reactions in Organic Chemistry
11.1 Introduction

Oxidation is the opposite of reduction, which was covered in the previous chapter. Oxidation involves the removal of electrons and or hydrogen atoms and the supply of oxygen to another molecule. Oxidation reactions are very important reactions in organic chemistry, and many of these reactions are used in synthetic organic chemistry to transform the functionalities of molecules into other functionalities. Oxidation reactions are also important in that the combustion of some compounds releases large amounts of energy in the form of heat. Before we proceed, however, we need to be able to identify oxidizing agents. One of the easiest oxidizing agents to recognize is oxygen. We are all familiar with rust, which is a form of oxidation, in which oxygen oxidizes metals. There are other oxidizing agents, and most that are used in organic chemistry typically contain a number of oxygen atoms. Two common oxidizing agents of organic chemistry are shown below.

We will see in this chapter that these oxidizing agents are some of the strongest oxidizing agents of organic chemistry, and sometimes salts of chromic acid are used in combination with sulfuric acid to make an even stronger oxidizing agent. In this chapter, we will apply the concept of oxidation to a number of different types of functional groups to obtain molecules with different functionalities. We will also utilize a combination of various reaction types, including oxidation reaction, to strategically synthesize new target molecules.