Gold-Catalyzed Formal Hexadehydro-Diels-Alder/Carboalkoxylation Reaction Cascades

Org Lett. 2021 Apr 2;23(7):2676-2681. doi: 10.1021/acs.orglett.1c00581. Epub 2021 Mar 15.

Abstract

A dual gold-catalyzed hexadehydro-Diels-Alder/carboalkoxylation cascade reaction is reported. In this transformation, the gold catalyst participated in the hexadehydro-Diels-Alder step, switching the mechanism from a radical type to a cationic one, and then the catalyst activated the resulting aryne to form an ortho-Au phenyl cation species, which underwent a carboalkoxylation rearrangement rather than the expected aryne-ene reaction.