Pd-Catalyzed cross-coupling synthesis of 4-aryl-3-formylcoumarins.

The threefold cross-coupling of triarylbismuth reagents with 4-chloro-3-formylcoumarins furnished the corresponding 4-aryl-3-formylcoumarins in a chemoselective manner with high yields under Pd-catalyzed conditions. This method was successfully applied to electronically different triarylbismuth reagents and 4-chloro-3-formylcoumarins preserving the 3-formyl group in the coumarin scaffold.

Rh-Catalyzed domino synthesis of 4-hydroxy-3-methylcoumarins via branch-selective hydroacylation.

A Rh-catalyzed domino synthesis of 4-hydroxy-3-methylcoumarins via branch-selective hydroacylation of acrylates and acrylamides using salicylaldehydes is described. This protocol under phosphine-free Rh-catalyzed conditions provided 4-hydroxy-3-methylcoumarins in high yields with excellent functional group tolerance and high selectivity.

Functional group manoeuvring for tuning stability and reactivity: synthesis of cicerfuran, moracins (D, E, M) and chromene-fused benzofuran-based natural products.

The protecting group manoeuvring as a strategy was applied for tuning the stability and reactivity of 4-(2,2-dibromovinyl)benzene-1,3-diol (12a) and 6-(2,2-dibromovinyl)-2,2-dimethylchroman-7-ol (22) in the domino synthesis of benzofuran-based natural products (1-8). The functional group demands and their impact on the reactivity driven by electronic effects were successfully managed by varying the protecting groups with substituted gem-dibromovinylphenols in domino couplings and triarylbismuth reagents under palladium-catalyzed conditions. This approach paved the way for the synthesis of moracin M (1) and cicerfuran (2), and the first time synthesis of moracin D (3) and moracin E (4) along with chromene-fused benzofuran-based natural products (5-8) in overall good yields.

Multimodal Acridine Photocatalysis Enables Direct Access to Thiols from Carboxylic Acids and Elemental Sulfur.

Development of photocatalytic systems that facilitate mechanistically divergent steps in complex catalytic manifolds by distinct activation modes can enable previously inaccessible synthetic transformations. However, multimodal photocatalytic systems remain understudied, impeding their implementation in catalytic methodology. We report herein a photocatalytic access to thiols that directly merges the structural diversity of carboxylic acids with the ready availability of elemental sulfur without substrate preactivation. The photocatalytic transformation provides a direct radical-mediated segue to one of the most biologically important and synthetically versatile organosulfur functionalities, whose synthetic accessibility remains largely dominated by two-electron-mediated processes based on toxic and uneconomical reagents and precursors. The two-phase radical process is facilitated by a multimodal catalytic reactivity of acridine photocatalysis that enables both the singlet excited state PCET-mediated decarboxylative carbon-sulfur bond formation and the previously unknown radical reductive disulfur bond cleavage by a photoinduced HAT process in the silane-triplet acridine system. The study points to a significant potential of multimodal photocatalytic systems in providing unexplored directions to previously inaccessible transformations.

Kinetically-driven reactivity of sulfinylamines enables direct conversion of carboxylic acids to sulfinamides.

Sulfinamides are some of the most centrally important four-valent sulfur compounds that serve as critical entry points to an array of emergent medicinal functional groups, molecular tools for bioconjugation, and synthetic intermediates including sulfoximines, sulfonimidamides, and sulfonimidoyl halides, as well as a wide range of other S(iv) and S(vi) functionalities. Yet, the accessible chemical space of sulfinamides remains limited, and the approaches to sulfinamides are largely confined to two-electron nucleophilic substitution reactions. We report herein a direct radical-mediated decarboxylative sulfinamidation that for the first time enables access to sulfinamides from the broad and structurally diverse chemical space of carboxylic acids. Our studies show that the formation of sulfinamides prevails despite the inherent thermodynamic preference for the radical addition to the nitrogen atom, while a machine learning-derived model facilitates prediction of the reaction efficiency based on computationally generated descriptors of the underlying radical reactivity.