Catalytic Decarboxylation of Silyl Alkynoates to Alkynylsilanes

Abstract

Herein, we describe a decarboxylative approach to the preparation of alkynylsilanes. Treatment of a silyl alkynoate in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) at 80 °C in the presence of catalytic amounts of CuCl and PCy3 produced the corresponding alkynylsilane in excellent yield. The copper-catalyzed decarboxylation proceeded smoothly with low catalyst loadings (0.5 mol % of CuCl and 1.0 mol % of PCy3) under mild reaction conditions and is easily scalable to gram quantities.