A mild, efficient and selective deprotection of t-butyldimethylsilyl-protected phenols using cesium carbonate

A mild and efficient method for the deprotection of aryl t-butyldimethysilyl (TBS) ethers is described. The protecting group TBS could be cleaved from aryl silyl ethers using cesium carbonate in DMF–H2O at room temperature to give the corresponding phenols in excellent yields. The reaction conditions allowed selective deprotection of aryl TBS-protected phenols in the presence of TBS, phenyloxycarbonyl or tetrahydropyranyl-protected alcohols.