SbCl 3 Initiated Aerobic Phosphorylation of sp 3 C-H Bond: A Facile Approach to α-Phosphorylated Tetrahydroisoquinolines.

An aerobic phosphorylation of N-aryltetrahydroisoquinolines was realized by SbCl 3 initiated sp 3 C-H bond functionalization, providing a series of α-aminophosphonates in high yields. This work reveals that SbCl 3 /O 2 is an efficient and facile catalyst system to enable the aerobic C-H functionalization, and antimony containing reagents might be potentially applied to more general transformations.