Acid-catalyzed dehydration of alcohols has been widely employed for the synthesis of alkenes. However, activated alcohols when employed as substrates in dehydration reactions are often pla-gued by the lack of alkene selectivity. In this work, the reaction system can be significantly improved through enhancing the performance of Lewis acid catalysts in the dehydration of activated alcohols by combining with a Lewis base. Observations of the reaction mechanism revealed that the Lewis base component might have changed the reaction rate order. Although both the principal and side reaction rates decreased, the effect was markedly more observed on the latter reaction. Therefore, the selectivity of the dehydration reaction was improved. On the basis of this observation, a new route to synthesize 2-cinnamyl-1,3-dicarbonyl compounds was developed by using 2-aryl-3,4- di-hydropyran as a starting substrate in the presence of a Lewis acid/Lewis base combined catalyst system.
