Electrochemical Defluorinative Alkylation of Alkenes with Trifluoromethyl Arenes

Defluorinative alkylation of alkenes is a useful reaction for converting trifluoromethyl compounds into diverse materials. Photoredox chemistry has been established as an efficient protocol to achieve difluoroalkylation reactions of alkenes using trifluoromethyl arenes as reagents. In comparison, electrochemistry has not achieved comparable progress. In this work, we reported a zinc-cation-promoted electrochemical monodefluorinative alkylation of alkenes using trifluoromethyl arenes as reagents. The reaction tolerated a series of functional groups, including pyridine, silyl, aniline, and cyclopropanes, and the isolated yield reached 90%.