In synthetic organic chemistry, unconventional strategies for advanced chemical synthesis pose interesting and challenging problems. Alcohols act as alkylating agents in the C–C and C–N bond-forming reactions via the dehydrogenative borrowing hydrogen strategy in traditional transition metal catalysis; however, as an acylating agent in the C–C bond-forming reactions is challenging and rarely reported. Here, we report the dehydrogenative coupling of benzylic alcohols with internal alkynes under nickel(II) catalysis, wherein alcohol is used as an acylating agent. This reaction system affords a wide range of α-branched aryl ketone derivatives with zero waste generation through the umpolung borrowing hydrogen strategy. Moreover, we have demonstrated the chemodivergent applications of the α-disubstituted ketones to other valuable building blocks, including large-scale synthesis of β-deuterated branched ketones. Several spectroscopic studies, intermediate identification, and density functional theory calculations were performed to elucidate the reaction mechanism.

中文翻译：

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镍催化下醇与内炔的脱氢偶联：获得 β-氘代支化酮

在合成有机化学中，先进化学合成的非常规策略提出了有趣且具有挑战性的问题。醇通过传统过渡金属催化中的脱氢借氢策略在 C-C 和 C-N 键形成反应中充当烷基化剂；然而，作为C-C键形成反应中的酰化剂具有挑战性并且很少有报道。在这里，我们报道了在镍（II）催化下苯甲醇与内部炔烃的脱氢偶联，其中醇用作酰化剂。该反应体系通过umpolung借氢策略提供了多种α-支化芳基酮衍生物，并且零废物产生。此外，我们还证明了α-二取代酮在其他有价值的构建模块中的化学发散应用，包括β-氘代支链酮的大规模合成。进行了一些光谱研究、中间体鉴定和密度泛函理论计算来阐明反应机理。