Abstract A facile and general three-step synthetic route towards unsymmetrical 9- arylxanthenes was developed. The reaction sequence involves nucleophilic substitution of commercially available 2-fluorobenzaldehydes with arenoxides, Grignard reaction of the resulting 2-arenoxybenzaldehydes with arylmagnesium bromides, followed by FeCl 3- catalyzed intramolecular diarylmethylation of the resulting carbinols. This strategy was ...
