Palladium-Catalyzed Cascade Arylation of Vinylogous Esters Enabled by Tris(1-adamantyl)phosphine.

Described is a method for the transformation of a cyclic vinylogous ester to the corresponding polyarylated product. We found a catalytic system comprising palladium diacetate and tris(1-adamantyl)phosphine is quite effective in promoting a set of controlled cascade arylations. As a result, a range of novel (hetero)aryl-containing scaffolds was synthesized with a high level of efficiency.