Partial Reduction of Esters to Aldehydes Using a Novel Modified Red-Al Reducing Agent

E-mail: dkan@kangwon.ac.kr Received February 11, 2014, Accepted March 12, 2014Key Words : Red-Al, cis-2,6-Dimethyl morpholine, Partial reduction, Ester, AldehydeAldehydes are valuable building blocks and reactive inter-mediates in organic synthesis. The general and classicalsyntheses of aldehydes from esters involve reduction-oxida-tion and partial reduction using efficient partial reducingagents. Obviously, one-step partial reduction methods aremore useful than two-step reduction-oxidation methodsowing to their simplicity, and generality in organic synthesis.Therefore, the partial reduction of esters to aldehydeswithout over-reduction to alcohols is useful for the synthesisof aldehydes, and a large number of reducing agents forthis purpose have been reported.