A Mild and Selective Method for the Hydrolysis of Esters with Trimethyltin Hydroxide

摘要

The mild and selective hydrolysis of esters can often be crucial in the sequence toward a target molecule and is,therefore,an important objective in contemporary organic synthesis.Although several methods exist to accomplish this task in certain cases,a mild,generally applicable protocol remains absent.Frequent problems encountered include the concurrent hydrolysis of other ester groups present within the molecule under scrutiny,epimerization of stereocenters,and elimination reactions induced by the often basic conditions employed.Herein we report a new and selective method for the hydrolysis of esters under extremely mild conditions that avoid such side reactions and lead to high yields of the corresponding carboxylic acids.