Expedient deaminative phosphorylation and sulfonylation of benzylic tertiary amines enabled by difluorocarbene†

Organophosphines and sulfones have a wide range of applications and they are prevalent in bioactive molecules as well as pharmaceutical compounds. Numerous strategies have been developed to synthesize them in modern synthetic chemistry. However, compared with transition metal-catalyzed strategies and photocatalysis-promoted methods, the transition metal-free protocols are elusive and have been less reported. Herein we report a difluorocarbene-enabled deaminative phosphonylation and sulfonylation reaction. Various allylic diphenylphosphine oxides and allylic sulfones could be obtained smoothly from the corresponding benzylic tertiary amines in moderate to high yields via this method.