Electrocatalytic Dehydrogenative Esterification of Aliphatic Carboxylic Acids: Access to Bioactive Lactones.

A scalable and efficient electrocatalytic dehydrogenative esterification is reported. With an indirect electrolysis strategy, both intra- and intermolecular-type reactions were amenable to this practical method. With n-Bu4 NI as the catalyst, undesired decarboxylation and Baeyer-Villiger oxidation were suppressed. More importantly, this novel method provided reliable and direct access to the natural product cytosporanone A on a gram scale.