The difunctionalization of alkenes based on the insertion of sulfur dioxide has been considered to be one of the most straightforward and powerful strategies for the construction of sulfones. Numerous strategies for activated alkenes have been developed in this area. However, progress in the SO2 insertion-mediated difunctionalization of unactivated alkenes, which encounters higher reactivity and shorter survival times of the alkyl radical intermediate, remains elusive and unresolved. Here, we report a strategy to access sulfonated quinazolinones from readily accessible aryl diazonium salts and Na2S2O5 via a catalyst-free photocatalytic system. The process is pro-posed to involve a photoinduced sulfur dioxide insertion/sulfonyl radical addition to an unactivated C=C double bond/Minisci-type cycliza-tion sequence. This approach features high functional group tolerance, broad substrate scope, and synthetic simplicity, and thus offers opportunities to rapidly build up sulfone-containing quinazolinones.

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