POLYMER-SUPPORTED MITSUNOBU ETHER FORMATION AND ITS USE IN COMBINATORIAL CHEMISTRY

Aromatic hydroxy adds have been attached to a polymeric solid support and the phenolic hydroxy groups have been reacted with a variety of primary and secondary alcohols under the conditions of the Mitsunobu reaction (triphenylphosphine and diethyl azodicarboxylate) in tetrahydrofuran. In most cases the reaction provided a nearly quantitative yield of alkyl aryl ethers, as determined after cleaving the product from the resin. To demonstrate that the polymer-supported Mitsunobu reaction is useful for combinatorial library synthesis, we synthesized a number of model compounds and a simple three randomization step library composed of 4,200 different compounds.