A highly selective, environmentally friendly, and scalable electrochemical protocol for the construction of α-acyloxy sulfides, through the synergistic effect of self-assembly-induced C­(sp3)–H/O–H cross-coupling, is reported. It features exceptionally broad substrate scope, high regioselectivity, gram-scale synthesis, construction of complex molecules, and applicability to a variety of nucleophiles. Moreover, the soft X-ray absorption technique and a series of control experiments have been utilized to demonstrate the pivotal role of the self-assembly of the substrates, which indeed is responsible for the excellent compatibility and precise control of high regioselectivity in our electrochemical protocol.

1,3,4‐Oxadiazoles are a kind of useful heterocycles which can be frequently found in materials and bioactive molecules. In this study, intermolecular electrochemical cyclization between α‐keto acids and acylhydrazines has been developed for the synthesis of 2,5‐disubstituted 1,3,4‐oxadiazoles with the yield up to 91 %. This transformation can be run under mild reaction conditions in the absence of external oxidant, base and transition metal catalyst. Both symmetrical and unsymmetrical 2,5‐disubstituted 1,3,4‐oxadiazoles could be prepared according to the careful choice of the substrate combination. Gram scale synthesis also illustrates the potential application of this protocol in large preparation.

A new protocol for SO bond formation was developed by electrochemical oxidative cross‐coupling between alcohols and thiophenols. With this strategy, a series of valuable sulfinic ester derivatives were synthesized up to 96% yield from basic starting materials. A preliminary mechanistic investigation reveals that this reaction involves oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).