.
Angewandte
Communications
Cross-Coupling Reaction
Decarboxylative Alkynylation and Carbonylative Alkynylation of
Carboxylic Acids Enabled by Visible-Light Photoredox Catalysis**
Quan-Quan Zhou, Wei Guo, Wei Ding, Xiong Wu, Xi Chen, Liang-Qiu Lu,* and Wen-
Jing Xiao*
Abstract: Visible-light-induced photocatalytic decarboxylative
alkynylations of carboxylic acids have been developed for the
first time. The reaction features extremely mild conditions,
broad substrate scope, and avoids additional oxidants. Impor-
tantly, a decarboxylative carbonylative alkynylation has also
been carried out in the presence of carbon monoxide (CO)
under photocatalytic conditions, which affords valuable
ynones in high yields at room temperature.
C
arboxylic acids are fundamental feedstocks which are
manufactured in large amounts. They are often employed as
robust and versatile precursors in the synthesis of pharma-
ceuticals, agro-, and fine chemicals, among which decarbox-
ylative cross-coupling reactions of carboxylic acids have
received increasing interests from academic and industrial
settings in the past decade.[1] Despite advances, an important
challenge that has not been fully addressed in this field is how
to activate carboxylic acids for further transformations under
environmentally friendly and sustainable conditions. Very
recently, visible-light-induced photoredox catalysis[2] has been
identified as an ideal approach to generate radicals from
carboxylic acids.[3] Therefore, a wealth of radical transforma-
tions have been achieved using this strategy at room temper-
ature (i.e., decarboxylative reduction,[4a] arylation,[3d,4b] vinyl-
ation,[4c,d] alkylation,[4e,f] oxidative amidation,[3c] and fluorina-
tion[4g–i]). However, to the best of our knowledge, no direct
radical decarboxylative alkynylations or their related carbon-
ylative alkynylations of carboxylic acids through visible-light
photoredox catalysis have been reported.
Scheme 1. Decarboxylative alkynylation/carbonylative alkynylation reac-
tions of carboxylic acids. BI=benziodoxolone; X=Br or Cl.
alkynylation of carboxylic acids with ethynylbenziodoxolones
(EBX) as the alkynylating agent in the presence of stoichio-
metric oxidants (Scheme 1a). Shortly after, the Xu group
developed a copper-catalyzed decarboxylative alkynylation
reaction of quaternary a-cyano acetate salts using an alkynyl
halogen (X = Br, Cl) as the starting material at 1308C in
DMAc (N,N-dimethylacetamide; Scheme 1b).[6b] To further
improve the radical decarboxylative alkynylation reaction of
carboxylic acids and exploit new transformations of these
chemicals, we disclosed a decarboxylative alkynylation and
carbonylative alkynylation of carboxylic acids through visi-
ble-light photoredox catalysis for the first time (Scheme 1c).
These reactions feature very mild conditions (i.e., room
temperature and low-energy visible-light irradiation), no
additional oxidant, and a broad substrate scope.
Initially, the decarboxylative alkynylation reaction was
examined with cyclohexyl carboxylic acid (1a) and phenyl-
EBX[6c–e] (2a) as model substrates in the presence of 3 mol%
Ir[dF(CF3)ppy]2(dtbbpy)PF6 (PC1, dF(CF3)ppy = 2-(2,4-
difluorophenyl)-5-(trifluoromethyl)pyridine, dtbbpy = 4,4-di-
tert-butyl-2,2’-bipyridine) as a photocatalyst and 1.5 equiv of
K2HPO4 as a base.[7] To our delight, this reaction does indeed
proceed under the irradiation of a bulb of 7 W blue LEDs, to
afford the desired alkynylation product 3aa in modest yield as
determined by gas chromatography (GC; Table S1, entry 1:
29% yield). Then, various metal or organic photocatalysts,
bases, solvents, additives, and the ratio of 1a to 2a were tested
to improve the reaction efficiency (Tables S1–S2). Finally, we
could isolate the desired product 3aa in 81% yield under the
optimal conditions (see the footnote in Table 1). Control
experiments indicated that both photocatalyst and visible
Transition-metal-catalyzed decarboxylative alkynylation
of carboxylic acids is among the most direct conversions for
the preparation of alkynes.[1b,f,5] However, only a handful of
works on radical decarboxylative alkynylations of carboxylic
acids have been disclosed. In this regard, Li and co-workers[6a]
in 2012 reported a silver-catalyzed, radical decarboxylative
[*] Q.-Q. Zhou,[+] W. Guo,[+] W. Ding, X. Wu, X. Chen, Prof. Dr. L.-Q. Lu,
Prof. Dr. W.-J. Xiao
Key Laboratory of Pesticide & Chemical Biology
College of Chemistry, Central China Normal University (CCNU)
152 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430079 (China)
E-mail: luliangqiu@mail.ccnu.edu.cn
[+] These authors contributed equally to this work.
[**] We are grateful to the National Science Foundation of China
(21232003, 21202053, 21272087, and 21372266), FANEDD
(201422), and Central China Normal University (CCNU15A02007)
for support of this research.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
11196
ꢀ 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 11196 –11199