Vinylation of Alcohols, Thiols, and Nitrogen Compounds Using a Stoichiometric Amount of In Situ Generated Acetylene

Abstract

In this work, we developed a highly efficient and versatile environmentally benign methodology for the vinylation of a broad scope of substances, including alcohols, thiols, and nitrogen compounds. The key advantage of the proposed method is the use of calcium carbide as a robust acetylene source in a stoichiometric ratio to the substrates. Lacking the requirement of acetylene excess, the developed protocol is safe, highly economic, and limits waste production. The procedure allows for a large variety of O-,S-,N-vinyl compounds to be synthesized in up to quantitative yields. Our methodology is scalable, allowing us to obtain vinyl derivatives in Gram-scale quantities. We also demonstrated the significant synthetic value of our approach by performing a label-economic synthesis of 13C2-labeled vinyl derivatives using calcium carbide-13C2. In our well-optimized process, the conversion of Ca13C2 reached 89%.

Keywords

• acetylene
• vinylation
• vinyl group
• alcohols
• thiols
• amines