New Design of a Disulfurating Reagent: Facile and Straightforward Pathway to Unsymmetrical Disulfanes by Copper-Catalyzed Oxidative Cross-Coupling

A novel reagent, which introduces two sulfur atoms in one step, was designed and used for the construction of diverse disulfanes by copper-catalyzed oxidative cross-coupling under mild reaction conditions. By applying this stable and readily prepared reagent, late-stage modification of pharmaceuticals and natural products can be achieved straightforward. The scaled-up experiments further indicated the practicality of this protocol. The pH value of the system plays a key role in achieving highly selective cleavage of the C−S bond instead of a S−S bond in the transformation.