A one-pot radical addition/fragmentation route to ketones and esters

A simple one-pot procedure has been developed that combines carbon-carbon bond formation via a radical addition to either substituted enol ethers or ketene acetals, with a subsequent fragmentation reaction to yield ketones and esters. The 'masked' methyl carbonyl radical acceptors discovered in this work are either commercially available or easily prepared in one to two steps. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.