Ring Expansion to 6-, 7-, and 8-Membered Benzosilacycles through Strain-Release Silicon-Based Cross-Coupling.

The synthesis of silacycles is highly appealing due to their important applications in organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, and materials chemistry. However, sila-tetralins and sila-benzosuberanes are surprisingly under-represented due to a lack of general methods to access these compounds. We successfully developed a Pd-catalyzed strain-release silicon-based cross-coupling as an unprecedented ring-expansion method, which constitutes a general route for preparing diverse sila-tetralins and sila-benzosuberanes.