Mechanochemical difluoromethylations of ketones

• Jinbo Ke,
• Pit van Bonn and
• Carsten Bolm

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 2799–2805, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.235

• efficiently converted to the target products under solvent-free conditions. The reactions proceed at room temperature and are complete within 90 minutes, demonstrating both efficiency and experimental simplicity. Keywords: ball milling; difluorocarbene; difluoromethylations; difluoromethyl enol ether

• standard reaction conditions with difluorocarbene precursor TMSCF2Br (2, 2.0 equiv), activator KFHF (4.0 equiv), and grinding auxiliary CsCl (4.0 equiv), difluoromethyl enol ether 3a was obtained after 90 min reaction time at 25 Hz in 74% yield, determined by quantitative 1H NMR spectroscopy (Table 1

• ketone 1g provided the corresponding product 3g in 56% yield. Difluoromethyl enol ether 3h with three methyl groups was obtained in 56% yield and column chromatography allowed to isolate it in 42% yield. 2-Acetonaphthone was successfully converted to 3i in 66% yield. Besides aryl ketones, arylalkyl