We described a one-pot vinylogous aldol addition of methyl 3-butenoate to aromatic aldehydes in the presence of silver salts and the TMSCl-TBAF mixture. The reaction can be done simply by sequentially mixing reagents in situ, and it does not require any catalyst or dienolate ether preparations prior to the reaction.Synthesis of a,b-unsaturated-d-lactones is of great importance to scientists because of their valuable antitumor, antibacterial, and antifungal activities.1,2 Vinylogous aldol addition of esters(1 or 2) to aldehydes (4) produces unsaturated esters (5) which are valuable precursors for the synthesis of 6-alkyl or 6-aryl substituted 5,6-dihydro-2H-pyran-2-one derivatives (6). 3,4 In general, vinylogous aldol addition reactions of esters (1 or 2) to aldehydes (4) are performed by a two-step procedure. In the first step, starting esters (1 or 2) should be transferred to O-silyldienolate (3) 5-9 and then purified by unreacted LDA and formed diisopropylamine by distillation before addition to aldehydes (Scheme 1). 10 Such a distillation procedure may not be preferred for expensive starting esters because of their low yields. Alternatively, these reactions can be catalyzed by simple Lewis acids 11 and their complexes which can be prepared prior to the reaction. 12 Here we report a one-pot vinylogous aldol addition of b,g-unsaturated ester (2) to aromatic aldehydes under mild conditions. The aim of the study is to prepare 1-methoxy-1-(trimethylsiloxy)-1,3-butadiene (3) in situ via the reaction of methyl 3-butenoate (2) and trimethylsilyl cation which can be simply generated by the reaction between silver salts and TMSCl. Then the addition of aldehyde would give the vinylogous aldol addition product (8). For this purpose 1-naphthaldehyde (7) was chosen as a model aromatic aldehyde for the optimization of reaction conditions (Scheme 2). Preliminary studies showed that pretreatment of starting ester 2 with silver carbonate and TMSCl for one hour followed by the addition of TBAF and 1-naphhaldehyde gave compound 8 with 39% yield. Interestingly, when the reaction was repeated in the absence of any one of the reagents, silver carbonate, TMSCl or TBAF, the reaction did not occur.To investigate the effect of choice of solvent on reaction yield, reaction was carried out in 1.0 mL of THF, toluene, NMP, and DMF. All reactions were terminated after 24 hours and products were isolated. It seems that reaction proceeds faster in DMF and gives the highest yield of 39%. When the amount of DMF was increased to 4.0 mL the yield of the reaction increased to 44% but further dilutions of reactants in 10 mL of DMF slowed down the reaction and resulted in only 28% yield (Table 1).Scheme 1 Vinylogous aldol addition products as precursors of a,bunsaturated-d-lactones.Scheme 2 One-pot vinylogous aldol addition to 1-naphthaldehyde.