In the course of our investigations on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of organoselenium compounds on gold, 1 we desired a protecting group for selenium that was stable to a variety of reaction conditions yet was easily removed under the conditions used for monolayer formation. We have previously reported a method for the in situ deprotection of aryl thioacetates using NH4OH. 2 The thiols that were generated in situ served as ...