Design and Synthesis of Thiazole and Thiazolidine Metallo-Supramolecular Networks.

A mild and selective procedure for the synthesis of 4-carboxy thiazoles and thiazolidines starting from naturally occurring cysteine by condensation with aldehydes is described. The optimized procedure, taking advantage of the positive effect of microwave irradiation on the MnO2-mediated oxidation step, is suitable for multigram scale. Coordination of these ligands towards a variety of transition metal ions gave new interesting metallorganic supramolecular architectures in which an extensive 3D network is created through hydrogen bonding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]