Esterification as a Demonstration of Electrochemically Powered Catalytic Dehydration

Abstract The reliance on wasteful stoichiometric reagents to accomplish dehydration reactions such as esterification, amidation, and alcohol substitution is a longstanding challenge in synthetic chemistry. To address this problem, an electrochemical approach has been developed as a new conceptual platform for dehydration reactions. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, an electrochemical esterification protocol has been described that proceeds at room temperature, without acid or base additives, and without consuming stoichiometric reagents. This approach therefore overcomes key complications of esterification chemistry, and we envision that it will similarly enable improvements to a range of important, related transformations. 1 Introduction 2 An Electrochemical Design for Catalytic Dehydration 3 Electrochemical Esterification 4 Conclusions