Liu lops off NHP esters to form alkenes stereospecifically
Citation: He, F.; Huang, Y.; Jiang, L.; Liu, W.H. Stereoselective Synthesis of Olefins from B-Hydroxy NHPI Esters. Org. Lett. 2025 , ASAP. Summary Figure: Background: No metals today! I saw this very interesting paper on a reaction with NHP esters and thought it's a short and nice little mechanism. I believe the Liu lab is fairly new, but they've done some interesting work so far in photochemistry and in non-organometallic methods. A lot of their reactions look like they should have some sort of metal involved, but they're unlocking some interesting and somewhat non-intuitive mechanisms with some clever thinking. For example, the precursor to this paper turned aldehydes into olefins using an alpha-halo NHP ester (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/qo/d3qo01805a): The idea is that you do a Reformatsky reaction: first generating the zinc enolate, which then attacks the aldehyde to form the 1,3-betahydroxy carbonyl. One thing that's n...