A Biomimetic Catalytic Aerobic Functionalization of Phenols

The importance of aromatic CO, CN, and CS bonds necessitates increasingly efficient strategies for their formation. Herein, we report a biomimetic approach that converts phenolic CH bonds into CO, CN, and CS bonds at the sole expense of reducing dioxygen (O 2 ) to water (H 2 O). Our method hinges on a regio‐ and chemoselective copper‐catalyzed aerobic oxygenation to provide ortho ‐quinones. ortho ‐Quinones are versatile intermediates, whose direct catalytic aerobic synthesis from phenols enables a mild and efficient means of synthesizing polyfunctional aromatic rings.