Electrochemical oxidation of toluene derivatives in the presence of a sulfilimine gave benzylaminosulfonium ions as stabilized benzyl cation pools, which reacted with subsequently added aromatic nucleophiles to give the corresponding cross-coupling products. The transformation serves as a powerful metal- and chemical-oxidant-free method for benzylic C-H/aromatic C-H cross-coupling. The method has been successfully applied to synthesis of TP27, an inhibitor of PTPase.
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Hayashi et al. (2016) studied this question.