Divergent Synthesis of Highly Substituted Pyridines and Benzenes from Dienals, Alkynes, and Sulfonyl Azides

Divergent synthesis is extremely important for the highly efficient preparation of structurally diverse target molecules. Herein, we describe a multicomponent cascade reaction, which allows access to highly substituted pyridines and benzenes by combining four individual steps in a one-pot manner from the same set of readily available starting materials. The azepine intermediates were first used as the precursors for 6π-electrocyclization to construct highly substituted pyridines and benzenes in a tunable manner.