We were inspired by the recent work of Shapiro and Vigalok 11 describing the aerial oxidation of aldehydes to carboxylic acids and considered that we might be able to utilise similar conditions for the generation and trapping of acyl radicals for carbon–carbon formation. Thus we rapidly identified an operationally simple protocol for the hydroacylation of vinyl sulfonate 1a with butanal2a on water at room temperature to give hydroacylation product 3a in good yield ( ...
