Unsaturated sultones with normal, medium and large ring sizes were efficiently synthesized by ring closing metathesis of sulfonates. The required substrates were readily derived from alkenols and olefinic sulfonyl chlorides.
synthesized by ring closing metathesis (RCM) of sulfonates. The resulting α,β-unsaturated sultones act as dienophiles in intermolecular Diels-Alder reactions. A first cyclic sulfate formation throughRCM has been discovered, and a rapid access to p-lactams fused to a sultam moiety of variable ring size was developed from inexpensive, commercially available starting materials using RCM as the key operation