A ruthenium-catalyzed addition of sulfonic acids to acetylene is reported. This method employs bulk industrial feedstock acetylene as C2 synthon under atmospheric pressure to access vinyl sulfonates in good to excellent yields without using toxic mercury catalysts, offering high atom economy and practical scalability. The resulting vinyl sulfonates serve as versatile vinylating reagents and can be readily transformed into diverse functionalized molecules.
Chen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.