New compounds possessing interesting odoriferous properties can be prepared by employing comparatively simple procedures and may be applied in perfume compositions. 4-Phenyl-1,3-dioxan is the common starting compound used in the synthesis of all eighteen new synthetic odoriferous compunds.
Readily available 4-phenyl-1,3-dioxan (1) is obtained by Prins’s reaction, i.e., by condensing styrene and formaldehyde in the presence of acid catalysts. It has no distinctly odoriferous properties as such; it ranks among balsamic types and is not used alone in the perfumery. On the other hand, it can be employed as a starting compound in the synthesis of a large variety of compounds, some of which were newly synthesized; while in others obtained by a known procedure, some interesting odours were detected which earlier had escaped attention due to an inadequate purification or isolation of these compounds from reaction mixtures, or simply due to lack of interest in this field.
New synthetic odoriferous compounds based on 4-phenyl-1,3-dioxan are reviewed in figure 1.