Cu-Catalyzed Aerobic Oxidative Esterification of Acetophenones with Alcohols to α‑Ketoesters

Abstract

Copper-catalyzed aerobic oxidative esterification of acetophenones with alcohols using molecular oxygen has been developed to form a broad range of α-ketoesters in good yields. In addition to reporting scope and limitations of our new method, mechanism studies are reported that reveal that the carbonyl oxygen in the ester mainly originated from dioxygen