Radical–carbanion relay enabled by earth-abundant titanium: carboxylation of 1°, 2°, and 3° benzyl chlorides with CO2
Lei Fan, Jiwu Zhao, Huaming Sun, Weiqiang Zhang, Guofang Zhang, Yajun Jian, Ziwei Gao · 2026
Read Radical–carbanion relay enabled by earth-abundant titanium: carboxylation of 1°, 2°, and 3° benzyl chlorides with CO2 by Lei Fan, Jiwu Zhao, Huaming Sun, Weiqiang Zhang, Guofang Zhang, Yajun Jian, Ziwei Gao (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13537190.txt.
Description
Lei Fan and six co-authors report, in a 2026 study, a way to turn carbon dioxide into useful acids using a common metal. The acids they target, arylacetic acids, form the base of common pain drugs and other fine chemicals. Past routes to them relied on precious metals, had limited substrate scope, or needed large amounts of additives.
Their route uses titanium(III), an earth-abundant metal, to catalyze the reductive carboxylation of benzyl chlorides with carbon dioxide. It works on primary, secondary, and tertiary forms, and also on related bromides and allylic chlorides. No magnesium salt additives are needed, and the reaction tolerates oxygen. Mechanistic tests point to a radical-carbanion relay: a radical forms first, gains charge, and then captures the carbon dioxide. The team demonstrated the route at gram scale and made several pain drugs in one step.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Lei Fan, Jiwu Zhao, Huaming Sun, Weiqiang Zhang, Guofang Zhang, Yajun Jian, Ziwei Gao |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 26 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |