Aromatization via a dibromination-double dehydrobromination sequence:: A facile and convenient synthetic route to 2,6-bis(trifluoroacetyl)phenols

An efficient and reliable method to synthesize 2,6-bis(trifluoroacetyl)phenols bearing various substituents in the 4-position was developed. These valuable fluorinated building blocks were obtained from the corresponding cyclohexanones in a facile and convenient procedure, demonstrated to be superior to the traditional approaches. The application of this methodology to cyclohexane-1,4-dione opened access to 2,5-bis(polyfluoroacyl)-1,4-hydroquinones. Structural peculiarities of the obtained phenols as well as their 1,3-dicarbonyl or 1,3,5-tricarbonyl precursors are discussed on the basis of multinuclear NMR spectroscopy,