tert-Butyl phenyl sulfoxide: a traceless sulfenate anion precatalyst.

tert-Butyl phenyl sulfoxide is employed as a traceless precatalyst for the generation of sulfenate anions under basic conditions and has been used to catalyze the coupling of benzyl halides to trans-stilbenes. The advantage of this precatalyst over previous precatalysts is that the byproduct generated on catalyst formation is a gas, facilitating product isolation in high purity. Using this second generation catalyst, a variety of trans-stilbenes were generated in 39-98% isolated yield.