Tri(n-butyl)phosphine-promoted domino reaction for the efficient construction of spiro[cyclohexane-1,3'-indolines] and spiro[indoline-3,2'-furan-3',3''-indolines]

• Hui Zheng,
• Ying Han,
• Jing Sun and
• Chao-Guo Yan

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 669–679, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.68

• . Additionally, the tri(n-butyl)phosphine-promoted domino annulation reaction of isatins and ethyl isatylidene cyanoacetates produced spiro[indoline-3,2'-furan-3',3''-indolines] in satisfactory yields. Keywords: isatin; spiro[cyclohexane-1,3'-indoline]; spiro[indoline-3,2'-furan-3',3''-indoline]; spirooxindole

• [cyclohexane-1,3'-indoline] 3a albeit with low yields (entries 4–6 in Table 1). The spiro[cyclohexane-1,3'-indoline] 3a was clearly produced by a tri(n-butyl)phosphine-catalyzed formal [4 + 2] cycloaddition reaction. This result showed that tri(n-butyl)phosphine has a higher nucleophilic catalytic ability than

• employed in the reaction. However, the reaction did not proceed to give the expected spiro[cyclohexane-1,3'-indoline], while a new spiro[indoline-3,2'-furan-3',3''-indoline] was obtained, which was clearly constructed from the annulation reaction of isatin with ethyl isatylidene cyanoacetate. Therefore, we