Electrochemical radical cation aza-Wacker cyclizations

• Sota Adachi and
• Yohei Okada

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 1900–1905, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.165

• aza-Wacker cyclizations under acidic conditions, which are expected to proceed via radical cations generated by single-electron oxidation of alkenes. Keywords: alkene; aza-Wacker cyclization; electrochemistry; radical cation; sulfonamide; Introduction Activating bench-stable substrates is the first

• cyclization (Table 1, entry 7) and the six-membered piperidine 3, instead of the five-membered pyrrolidine 2, was obtained in excellent yield without electricity (Table 1, entry 8). Thus, it is proposed that the electrochemical aza-Wacker cyclization under acidic conditions proceeded via radical cations to

• give five-membered pyrrolidine 2, while the six-membered piperidine 3 is formed through ionic cyclization under non-electrochemical conditions. With the optimized conditions in hand, the scope of the electrochemical aza-Wacker cyclization was investigated (Scheme 3). Various aryl sulfonamides 4–6 were