Hear ye, hear ye!
We have JUST PUBLISHED a new paper in Tetrahedron Letters describing the alkylation of simple ketones with secondary acetates, a process promoted by–guess what?–TMSOTf! Karmen Smith ’25 discovered this reaction way back in the fall of 2022, and Katie Marchione ’25 took that discovery, optimized it, and ran with it, producing about a million examples, give or take, of it working. From start to finish this project has been one of the fastest to reach completion for my group in the past decade, and that’s a real testament to Katie especially. You can find the paper here but only if you click it fast enough. If you are slower, you can always find it at the permanent doi here.
Here’s the citation:
Katelyn A. Marchione, Karmen M. Smith, C. Wade Downey. One-pot enol silane formation-alkylation reactions of ketones promoted by trimethylsilyl trifluoromethanesulfonate: Direct access to β,β-diarylated ketones and related compounds. Tetrahedron Letters 2025, 168, Article 155679.
Congratulations to Katie and Karmen!