“…At this point, we reasoned that a synthetic equivalent of HBr, a volatile acid much stronger than HCl, may offer an adequate reactivity. Correspondingly, bromotrimethylsilane, which has already found practical use in solid phase peptide chemistry [24][25][26], was freshly prepared [27] and when employed at ca. 2 M concentration and 5 : 1 molar ratio, nearly quantitative conversion of 1a into 2a was obtained [ Figure 1, Method A (see experimental part)].…”