Highly Discriminative and Chemoselective Deprotection/Transformations of Acetals with the Combination of Trialkylsilyl Triflate/2,4,6-Collidine.

Acetals are the most useful protecting groups for carbonyl functional groups. In addition to the role of protection, they can also be used as synthons of carbonyl functions. Previously, we developed a chemoselective deprotection and nucleophilic substitution of acetals from aldehydes in the presence of ketals. This article describes the highly discriminative and chemoselective transformations of acetals bearing different substitution patterns, different types of acetals, as well as mixed acetals. These reactions can achieve the transformations that cannot be attained by conventional methods, and their results strongly suggest the combination of R3SiOTf/2,4,6-collidine to promote such unprecedented phenomena.