A mild, efficient and selective deprotection of t-butyldimethylsilyl-protected phenols using cesium carbonate

A mild and efficient method for the deprotection of aryl t-butyldimethysilyl (TBS) ethers is described. The protecting group TBS could be cleaved from aryl silyl ethers using cesium carbonate in DMF-H2O at room temperature to give the corresponding phenols in excellent yields. The reaction conditions allowed selective deprotection of aryl TBS-protected phenols in the presence of TBS, pbenyloxycarbonyl or tetrahydropyranyl-protected alcohols. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.