A series of oligoarenes have been synthesized via sulfoxide-based iterative dehydrogenative transformations. By utilizing the sulfinyl moieties as on/off-switchable directing groups, overreactions and/or undesired oligomerizations were completely suppressed. Since the dehydrogenative couplings were not hampered by steric hinderance, sterically encumbered oligoarenes were synthesized.
Key words
iterative synthesis - sulfoxide - Pummerer reaction - [3,3] sigmatropic rearrangement - oligoarene