P. Lu, Tianyuan Hou, Xiangyong Gu
Apr 2, 2015
Citations
0
Influential Citations
25
Citations
Journal
Organic letters
Abstract
A mild and high-yielding visible-light-promoted conversion of alkyl benzyl ethers to the alkyl esters or alkyl alcohols was developed. Mechanistic studies provided evidence for a radical chain reaction involving the homolytic cleavage of O-α-sp(3) C-H bonds in the substrate as one of the propagation steps. We propose that α-bromoethers are key intermediates in the transformation.