Cover Feature: DMSO‐Triggered Complete Oxygen Transfer Leading to Accelerated Aqueous Hydrolysis of Organohalides under Mild Conditions (ChemSusChem 13/2019)

The Front Cover shows that addition of DMSO can greatly accelerate the aqueous hydrolysis of organohalides, thus providing a neutral, more efficient, milder, and more economic new process for alcohol preparation. Mechanistic studies using 18 O‐DMSO and 18 O‐H 2 O showed that, contrary to the opinion that DMSO works as a dipolar solvent to enhance the nucleophilicity of water, the accelerating effect comes from a complete oxygen transfer from DMSO to organohalides through generation of ROS + Me 2 ⋅X − salts through C−O bond formation, followed by O−S bond disassociative hydrolysis of ROS + Me 2 ⋅X − with water. This method is applicable to a wide range of organohalides and thus may have potential for practical industrial applications owing to the easy recovery of DMSO from the H 2 O/DMSO mixture by regular vacuum rectification. More information can be found in the Communication by Liu et al on page 2994 in Issue 13, 2019 (DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201802138).