22. Palladium Catalysis Enables Benzylation of α,α-Difluoroketone Enolates

Yang, M.-H.; Hunt, J. R.; Sharifi, N. Altman, R. A.*

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 9080–9083.

A palladium-catalyzed decarboxylative benzylation reaction of α,α-difluoroketone enolates is reported, in which the key C(α)−C(sp3) bond is generated by reductive elimination from a palladium intermediate. The transformation provides convergent access to α-benzyl-α,α-difluoroketone-based products, and should be useful for accessing biological probes.