Calcium-Catalyzed Synthesis of Fused Furo[2,3-b]furans and Substituted Furans from 2-Oxo Aldehydes and Cyclic Enols

We report here an atom-economical, syn-diastereoselective synthesis of naphtho-fused furo-[2,3-b]-furans along with naphthofurans at room temperature using readily available 2-naphthols and 2-oxo aldehydes using an alkaline earth catalyst [Ca-(OTf)(2)]. 2-Oxo aldehydes having both aryl and alkyl substitutions reacted well. A good number of arenols responded to give fused furans, but selected arenols gave only furofurans. Synthetic applications and gram-scale synthesis were also demonstrated to strengthen this strategy.