Dedicated to Laura Ošeka, who was born during the preparation of the manuscript for this article and helped to write it.Electrochemical hydroxylation of arenes by trifluoroacetic acid provides a straightforward access to aryl oxygen compounds under the mild and environmental benign reaction conditions. Harmful and pollutant stoichiometric amounts of oxidation reagents and the use of metal-catalysts can be avoided. Herein, we present a novel method for the synthesis of hydroxylated products from electron-rich arenes that was achieved by the implementation of a continuous-flow setup. The continuous nature of the process allowed to fine-tune the reactions conditions in order to prevent the decomposition of the sensitive products expanding the reaction scope beyond electron-poor and neutral arenes that were previously reported in the batch processes. Thus, synthetically valuable hydroxylated arenes were obtained in good yields with the residence time just over a minute. In order to demonstrate the reliability and the efficiency of the electrochemical flow setup, a scale up experiment was also performed.
The Front Cover demonstrates that electrochemistry in continuous flow is so convenient and reliable that even kids could do it. Electrochemical hydroxylation of sensitive electron‐rich arenes was achieved by the implementation of a flow setup. Our goal is to motivate organic chemists, who tend to be quite conservative, to apply the modern techniques in their everyday research and explore new reaction pathways. Cover artwork by Alina Andreyenka. More information can be found in the Research Article by M. Ošeka et al.
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