Dendritic Polyoxometalate Hybrids: Efficient and Recoverable Catalysts for Oxidation Reactions

The purpose of this microreview is to highlight developments in dendritic polyoxometalate (DENDRI‐POM) hybrid materials and their catalytic application in oxidation reactions. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reviews dealing with the design and synthesis of DENDRI‐POM hybrids and their use as catalysts. Thus, this article will mainly focus on research carried out in our group, including a brief summary of the work done by others in the field. The context includes the design and synthetic strategies for DENDRI‐POM materials, including chiral counterparts, and the use of DENDRI‐POM materials as recoverable catalysts. We show that the properties of POMs, such as, their solubility, stability, and catalytic efficiency and selectivity, including enantioselectivity, can be tuned by varying the structure of the dendritic part in the DENDRI‐POM framework. Dendritic polyoxometalate (DENDRI‐POM) hybrids are efficient and recoverable catalysts for oxidation reactions, including enantioselective transformations with up to 37 % ee. Although these ee values are still not satisfactory for practical asymmetric synthesis, its represents the best enantioselectivity reported to date in the oxidation of organic substrates with DENDRI‐POM hybrids.