Merging shuttle reactions and paired electrolysis for reversible vicinal dihalogenations

Vicinal dibromides and dichlorides are important commodity chemicals and indispensable synthetic intermediates in modern chemistry that are traditionally synthesized using hazardous elemental chlorine and bromine. Meanwhile, the environmental persistence of halogenated pollutants necessitates improved approaches to accelerate their remediation. Here, we introduce an electrochemically assisted shuttle (e-shuttle) paradigm for the facile and scalable interconversion of alkenes and vicinal dihalides, a class of reactions that can be used both to synthesize useful dihalogenated molecules from simple alkenes and to recycle waste material through retro-dihalogenation. The reaction is demonstrated…