Facile and selective deprotection of aryl acetates using sodium perborate under mild and neutral conditions

A variety of aryl acetates are cleaved to the corresponding phenols using sodium perborate in methanol under mild conditions (25 °C). The effectiveness of this protocol is manifested in its tolerance of different functional groups and selectivity of deprotection towards aryl acetates whereas alkyl acetates are found to be unreactive under these reaction conditions.