Carbonate-assisted selectively deoxygenative cross-coupling reaction between aryl and aliphatic aldehydes: a straightforward route to access α-alkylated aryl ketones

alpha-Alkylated aryl ketones play a prominent role in pharmaceutically active compounds. Thus, developing a straightforward and atom/step-economical strategy for gaining modular access to these privileged structural motifs is of central importance. Herein, we describe a novel direct reductive cross-coupling reaction of aryl-aliphatic or aryl-aryl aldehydes. This reaction demonstrates a unique feature of merging two different aldehydes using inexpensive carbonate as a reductant with excellent chemoselectivities. This novel protocol has a broad substrate scope with excellent functional group tolerance, which allows one to prepare a library of valuable alpha-alkylated aryl ketones and bioactive molecules by late-stage functionalization. Moreover, a series of mechanistic studies uncovers a rational pathway for these transformations. A novel reductive cross-coupling reaction of two different aldehydes for rapidly assembling alpha-alkylated aryl ketones has been developed. The inexpensive carbonate served not only as a base but also as an efficient electron donor.