Recent advance on the borylation of carbon-oxygen bonds in aromatic compounds

Organoboron compounds and their derivatives are synthetically versatile building blocks because they are readily available, stable, and highly useful for potential organic transformations. Arylboronic esters are of particular interest due to their well-established synthetic methods: transition metal catalyzed borylations of aryl halides. However, the use of aryl halides as an electrophile has one serious disadvantage: formation of toxic halogenated byproducts. A promising alternative substrate to aryl halides would be phenol derivatives such as aryl ethers, esters, carbamates and sulfonates. The phenol derivatives involve several advantages: their abundance, relatively low toxicity and versatile synthetic application. However, utilization of the aryl methyl ether, which is one of the simplest phenol derivatives, remains as a challenge, as C-OMe bond activation requires high activation energy and methoxides are not good leaving groups. Nevertheless, there have been a significant recent progress on ipso-borylation of aryl methyl ether including Martin's nickel catalysis. Here, we review the current advance on the borylation of carbon-oxygen bonds of unactivated C-OMe bond in aromatic compounds.