A novel aromatic carbocation-based coupling reagent for esterification and amidation reactions.

A novel tropylium-based coupling reagent has been developed to facilitate the synthesis of a series of esters, amides, lactones and peptides under mild reaction conditions. Remarkably, this reagent can be used in catalytic amounts in conjunction with a sacrificial reagent, offering a new and efficient method for nucleophilic coupling reactions of carboxylic acids.