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 nBu(4)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.