A high-yielding and convenient procedure for the efficient conversion of a-hydroxyphosphonates to a-acetyloxyphosphonates using acetic anhydride in the presence of catalytic amounts of copper triflate is described.a-Acetyloxyphosphonates are considered as important and valuable phosphorus compounds for the synthesis of optically active a-hydroxyphosphonates. Enzymatic systems have been introduced for the enantioselective hydrolysis of racemic a-acetyloxyphosphonates. 1 Chiral and nonracemic a-hydroxyphosphonates are useful precursors for a variety of a-substituted phosphonates especially for a-aminophosphonic acids which have received considerable attention in medical, bioorganic and organic chemistry owing to their potential activities as analogues of aamino acids. 1a,2Literature survey indicates that a practical and high yielding method for the synthesis of pure a-acetyloxyphosphonates is rare. The reactions of aldehydes and ketones with acyl phosphites is reported for the preparation of a-acetyloxyphosphonates at 120 °C to produce the desired products in low yields. 3 The other reported procedures for this purpose include direct acetylation of ahydroxyphosphonates 4 with ketene catalyzed by BF 3 ·Et 2 O 5 or H 2 SO 4 . 6 These protocols suffer from usually low yields 5 , requiring rather high temperatures (70-80 °C) and long reaction times (10-15 h). 6 Acetylation of a-hydroxyphosphonates with Ac 2 O or AcCl in the presence of Et 3 N or pyridine has been conducted at room temperature in 1-18 hours resulting in low to excellent yields. 1b,1c,7 In the other reported procedure, AcCl has been used for direct acetylation of a-trimethylsilyloxyphosphonates at a rather high temperature (120 °C) to produce a-acetyloxyphosphonates in moderate yields (55-70%). 8 In this article we present a new procedure in which a mild Lewis acid, copper triflate [Cu(OTf) 2 ] 9 has been used for the first time for direct acetylation of a-hydroxyphosphonates with Ac 2 O at room temperature in the absence of solvent in excellent yields with short reaction times. Reactions of diethyl a-hydroxyphosphonates have been under investigation in our laboratory in recent years. 10 Along this line, recently we have introduced [Cu(OTf) 2 ] as a mild and efficient catalyst for the silylation of a-hydroxyphosphonates with HMDS. 10d A recent report on the acetylation of traditional hydroxy functional groups with Ac 2 O catalyzed by Cu(OTf) 2 11 prompted us to apply this Lewis acid catalyst for direct acetylation of diethyl a-hydroxyphosphonates. We have studied the reactions of various diethyl a-hydroxyphosphonates 1a-o in the presence of Ac 2 O catalyzed by 0.013-0.08 equivalents of Cu(OTf) 2 in the absence of solvent at room temperature (Scheme 1 and Table 1). Scheme 1As shown in Table 1, various types of diethyl a-hydroxy(arylmethyl)phosphonates 1a-k were cleanly converted into their corresponding diethyl aacetyloxyphosphonates 2a-k in excellent yields (92-98%). Diethyl a-hydroxy-2-naphthyl-, 3-pyridyl-, alkyland aryl-b,g-unsaturated phosphonates ...