A facile preparation of tetralins from arene-1,4-diones using titanium(IV) chloride and triethylsilane

A facile method for the synthesis of tetralins has been described which uses various substituted phenylpentane-1,4-diones as starting material with a combination of TiCl4/Et3SiH. The synthesis involves three reactions under mild conditions. A mechanism has been proposed for the reductive cyclization through ionic hydrogenation, and titanium(IV) chloride catalyzed cyclization.