A stepwise one-pot synthesis of aliphatic thiols and their derivatives from acrylamides and sulfur.

Elemental sulfur enables the convenient formation of C-S bonds and the direct incoporation of S-S bonds. The reactivity of easily accessible electron deficient alkenes towards sulfur, however, is barely disclosed. Herein, we investigated the reactivity of acrylamides with sulfur and eventually developed a new pseudo-multicomponent reaction for the preparation of polysulfides. Sequential one-pot reduction led to diversely substituted thiols. Additional third stage one-pot modifications provided thioethers, unsymmetric disulfide and thioester.