The invention discloses a preparation method of
cinnamic acid or derivatives thereof. The method comprises the following steps: adding a
dichloromethane solution of triethyl phosphonoacetate,
sodium chloride and
raw material aldehyde into a reaction container, performing room-temperature reaction, adding a saturated water solution of
ammonium chloride, stirring, performing organic phase washing, performing reduced pressure treatment to remove a
solvent, and performing
column chromatography purification to obtain a light yellow oily product; adding a
mixed solution of
dichloromethane and
methanol into a
reaction product, stirring, dropwise adding a
methanol solution of
sodium hydroxide to generate a large quantity of turbid materials, performing reduced pressure
distillation on a reaction solution until the reaction solution is dry, removing impurities, extracting, combining organic phases,
drying, performing reduced pressure treatment to remove the
solvent, and
drying in vacuum to obtain a white or light yellow product. According to the method, triethyl phosphonoacetate is adopted as an activating
reagent for condensation esterification with
aldehyde and then the product is conveniently prepared through
alkaline hydrolysis; the reaction can be carried out at
room temperature, and the shortcomings of low yield, high
reaction temperature, high
toxicity and serious
pollution in a conventional process are overcome.