Vinyl esters as effective acetaldehyde surrogates in [4+1] cycloaddition based multicomponent cascade

A new multicomponent cascade has been designed by utilizing vinyl esters as effective acetaldehyde surrogate. While most of the cyclic alpha-ketoenols underwent a facile three component conversion to annulated furans, phenols such as naphthol and sesamol got simply acylated under the same reaction conditions. This microwave assisted method provides clean access to a wide range of functionalised furans in a short span of time.