Hydrogen Bonding‐Assisted Deborylative Hydroxylation of Aryl Boronic Acids via Supramolecular Catalysis

Abstract Expanding the scope of hydrogen bonding catalysis toward greener chemistry, we have devised a simple and efficient protocol for the deborylative activation of arylboronic acids for the synthesis of phenols. Utilizing the supramolecular‐hydrogen bonding catalytic behavior of cyclodextrins, a facile C─B bond cleavage was obtained for the subsequent C─O bond formation employing H 2 O 2 as an oxidant. The current protocol is organocatalytic approach, which has potential benefits over the traditional metal‐based approaches and is found to convert diverse arylboronic acids into corresponding phenols with excellent yields. The gram‐scale experiments for the synthesis of an API, guaiacol, reveals the industrial feasibility of this methodology.