Catalytic dehydroxylative homo-coupling reaction of alcohols by using iron/l-ascorbic acid system

Abstract

The development of catalytic transformation systems using alcohol as a carbon source is an important research topic. Herein, we report an iron catalyzed-dehydroxylative homo-coupling reaction of allyl alcohols. The catalytic homo-coupling reaction of 1,3-diphenylprop-2-en-1-ol in the presence of FeBr₂ and L-ascorbic acid proceeded smoothly to provide the corresponding 1,5-diene in good yield. This catalytic system could also be applied to benzyl alcohols. Furthermore, a gram-scale catalytic dehydroxylative homo-coupling reaction of alcohols was successfully achieved to validate the scalability of this transformation of alcohols as carbon sources.