on the occasion of his 68 th birthday.

No abstract

Due to the versatile applications of thioethers and thioesters in organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, the pharmaceutical industry, and materials science, recently the construction of C-S bonds has emerged as the forefront in the field of cross-coupling reactions. Enough progress has been made in this direction by using both metal catalysis and other alternative processes. A brief review of the recent developments in the area of C-S coupling reaction is described.

No abstract

A simple and an efficient one-pot three-component reaction of arylamines, aromatic aldehydes, and cyclic ketones was described for the synthesis of various fused quinoline, benzoquinoline, and naphthoquinoline derivatives by using camphorsulfonic acid as a catalyst. The exploitation of pregnenolone steroid for benzoquinolines and terephthalaldehyde for bis-benzoquinolines synthesis was achieved with 68-75% yields. The reactivity of arylamines and the mechanistic study for the formation of benzoquinoline was described precisely. The present protocol offers a great potential for atom-economy under mild conditions.

An example of proaromatic C(alkenyl)−H olefination is reported. This protocol utilized a free carboxylic acid as a directing group for C(alkenyl)−H activation of 1,4-cyclohexadiene and coupled with various alkenes. Direct and sequential bisolefinations of proaromatic acids were achieved. The synthetic applicability has been exhibited by [4 + 2] cycloaddition and decarboxylative aromatization of the resulting proaromatic 1,3dienes. Additionally, several kinetic studies also have been carried out to elucidate the reaction mechanism.

In this study, a general procedure was proposed for synthesizing thioethers and selenide ethers from anilines under solventfree and transition-metal-free conditions. Thioethers were formed when anilines reacted with thiols under blue light-emitting-diode (LED) irradiation at room temperature without a photocatalyst. When reactions were performed using anilines and diselenides, the corresponding selenide ethers were obtained with satisfactory to excellent yields. The reaction was performed under photocatalyst-free and solvent-free conditions without blue LEDs. The advantages of this system include convenient operations, mild reaction conditions, satisfactory functional group tolerance, and late-stage selenylation of drug molecules.

A nickel-catalyzed aryl–aroyloxyl C­(sp2)–O radical cross-coupling reaction conducted using a redox active ester with aryl zinc reagent was developed. This method demonstrates a new disconnection approach for formation of aryl aryl esters. In the one-pot sequential process, the readily available aryl carboxylic acids can be converted into functionalized aryl aryl esters and heteroaryl esters. This protocol is amenable to the gram-scale synthesis. The present method has a wide substrate scope and high functional group tolerance.