An acylsilane synthesis by a Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of thiol esters and silylzinc chlorides was developed. S-Phenyl thiol esters with a variety of functional groups were converted to corresponding acylsilanes.Since acylsilanes possess a variety of unique reactivities, 1 their synthesis has been an important research topic in organic chemistry.1p1r,24 Brook 2a and Corey 2b independently reported representative methods to prepare acylsilanes by silylation of a lithiated dithiane followed by removal of dithiane. Acylsilanes are also synthesized by 1,2-addition of silyllithium to aldehydes followed by oxidation according to a procedure of Reich.
5However, both methods have only limited functional group compatibility since they use strong bases such as n-BuLi. To circumvent these problems, palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling of acid chlorides with disilane 4a4d or stannylsilane 4e has recently been reported. These methods, however, are unsatisfactory because they require harsh conditions such as heating at high temperature without solvent. On the other hand, thiol esters are a suitable substrate for cross-coupling reactions based on oxidative addition of a transition-metal catalyst to the CS bond. 6,7 Under this background, we initiated a study of the transformation of thiol esters to acylsilanes. Herein, we report a mild synthesis of acylsilanes by palladium-catalyzed crosscoupling of thiol esters and silylzinc chlorides.Based on the proposed reaction mechanism for the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of thiol esters with organozinc reagent (Scheme 1), we considered a working hypothesis for transformation of thiol esters to acylsilanes as shown in Scheme 2. Oxidative addition of palladium(0) to the CS bond of the thiol ester gives acyl palladium species which should be transformed to the acylsilane via transmetalation with a silyl metal reagent followed by reductive elimination with regeneration of Pd(0).With this idea in mind, we explored a suitable silyl metal reagent for the expected cross-coupling reaction. Using thiol ester 1a as the model substrate, various silyl metal reagents 4,8