Highly Site-selective Electrooxidation Providing Facile Entries to Functionalized Aromatic Acetals

Abstract

Given the fact that aldehydes are among the most fundamental and versatile building blocks in organic synthesis, the development of highly efficient and selective methods for their preparation, especially for those delicately functionalized ones remains significant challenging. To address such an issue, Xu and co-workers have recently reported an elegant electrochemical approach realizing the highly regioselective oxidation of functionalized methyl aromatic hydrocarbons towards the desired aromatic acetals without the use of any chemical oxidants or transition metal catalysts. These acetals can be then conveniently converted into corresponding structurally diverse aldehydes via hydrolysis. In addition, the synthetic practicability of current method was further highlighted as the key step in the preparation of the antihypertensive drug telmisartan. This work has been published in the Nature Communications and can be reached at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16519-8.

References

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