Enolate umpolung reactivities offer valuable and potentially unique alternatives over the enolate counterparts for the construction of ubiquitous carbonyl compounds. We disclose here that N-alkenoxypyridinium salts, generated readily upon gold-catalyzed additions of protonated pyridine N-oxide to C-C triple bonds of unactivated terminal alkynes, display versatile enolate umpolung chemistry upon heating and react with tethered arene nucleophiles in an SN2' manner. In a synthetically efficient one-pot, two-step process, this chemistry enables expedient preparation of valuable benzo-fused seven-/eight-membered cyclic ketones, including those of O-/N-heterocycles, from easily accessible aryl-substituted linear alkyne substrates. The reaction yields can be up to 87%.
In this article, we review the recent developments in the transition-metal-catalyzed decarbonylation of carboxylic acids to produce olefins by the formal acyl C–O activation mechanism and discuss future challenges in this field.
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