Efficient Iron-Catalyzed Direct β-Alkylation of Secondary Alcohols with Primary Alcohols

Sun and coworkers have put together a nifty little way to couple alcohols (DOI: 10.1002/adsc.201000907), utilizing inexpensive, commercially available, and relatively benign iron catalysts in the place of the standard catalysts.

The authors show 30+ examples of the reaction and suggest a mechanism:

All in all, a neat addition to the family of iron-catalyzed reactions