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Updated: Dec 23, 2025
Synthesis of Esters Via a Greener Steglich Esterification in Acetonitrile
Published on: October 30, 2018
Exhaustive Reduction of Esters Enabled by Nickel Catalysis
Adam Cook1, Sekar Prakash1, Yan-Long Zheng1
1Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation, Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Ottawa, 10 Marie Curie, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada.
Abstract:
We report a one-step procedure to directly reduce unactivated aryl esters into their corresponding tolyl derivatives. This is achieved by an organosilane-mediated ester hydrosilylation reaction and subsequent Ni/NHC-catalyzed hydrogenolysis. The resulting conditions provide a direct and efficient alternative to multi-step procedures for this transformation that often require the use of hazardous metal hydrides. Applications in the synthesis of -CD3-containing products, derivatization of bioactive molecules, and chemoselective reduction in the presence of other C-O bonds are demonstrated.
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