Nickel-catalyzed esterification of mandelic acids with alcohols

Mandelates and their derivatives are widely used in organic synthesis, drug discovery, biodegradable polymers and other related fields. Therefore, the effective and simple synthesis of these compounds has attracted much attention. In this paper, a nickel(II)-catalyzed esterification of mandelic acids with different alcohols was realized for the synthesis of mandelic acid esters. This transformation was conducted under mild reaction conditions with yields up to 95%, and was successfully utilized in the gram-scale synthesis of medicine cyclandelate.