Highly Efficient Synthesis of Phenols by Copper-Catalyzed Hydroxylation of Aryl Iodides, Bromides, and Chlorides
Copper catalyzed hydroxylation of chloro-, bromo- and iodoarenes.
This work by Jiang et al. (Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, China) is somewhat the opposite to another Top Ten in this issue. There you use a phenol to introduce F. Here, you use Cl, Br or I to introduce a phenol. The use of copper with a ligand allows the introduction of the hydroxy moiety in yields from good to excellent. About 20 examples are included, and the protocol can be further modified for the alkylation of the phenol, so you can obtain a protected compound.
Org. Lett., 2011, 13 (16), pp 4340–4343. See: 10.1021/ol2016737
