Mild Deprotection of Dithioacetals by TMSCl/NaI Association in CH 3 CN

A mild process using a combination of TMSCl and NaI in acetonitrile is used to regenerate carbonyl compounds from a variety of dithiane and dithiolane derivatives. This easy to handle and inexpensive protocol is also efficient to deprotect oxygenated and mixed acetals as 1,3‐dioxanes, 1,3‐dioxolanes and 1,3‐oxathianes quantitatively. As a possible extension of this method, it was also shown that nitrogenated substrates such as hydrazones, N ‐tosylhydrazones, and ketimines reacted well under these conditions to give the expected ketones in high yields. The methodology proposed herein is a good alternative to the existing methods since it does not use metals, oxidants, reducing agents, acidic or basic media, and keto‐products were obtained in high to excellent yields.