We have great news – our paper describing the one-pot synthesis of furans from simple ketones and silylalkynes is now published in Tetrahedron Letters. You can find all the scintillating details at this link. This work stemmed from a serendipitous observation made by Yiqi Liu ’18 during our investigation of the TMSOTf-promoted propargylation of ketones. Dani Sklar ’20 took Yiqi’s observation and ran with it, figuring out how to optimize the reaction for the unexpected byproduct, a 2-methylfuran, and expand the reaction scope to more than a dozen examples. Alex Helbling ’23 took over at the end of Dani’s reign and polished off the project with grace and style. Congratulations to Dani, Alex, and Yiqi for this cool paper.
New paper: Furan synthesis