Directed meta-metalation using alkali-metal-mediated zincation

Transforming a carbon–hydrogen bond of an organic compound into a more useful, more reactive carbon–metal bond (so-called deprotonative metalation), which, in turn, can be treated with an electrophile to create a new carbon–carbon or carbon–heteroatom bond, is one of the most fundamental synthetic approaches that chemists employ to construct compounds.[1, 2] Many of these reactions involve a special type of deprotonative metalation, in which an activating functional group is positioned adjacent to the hydrogen atom (strictly a proton) that is to be replaced by the metal cation