Direct and Unified Access to Carbon Radicals from Aliphatic Alcohols by Cost-Efficient Titanium-Mediated Homolytic C-OH Bond Cleavage.

Low-valent Ti-mediated homolytic C-O bond cleavage offers unified access to carbon radicals from ubiquitous non-activated tertiary, secondary, and even primary alcohols. In contrast to the representative Ti reagents, which were ineffective for this purpose, "TiCl (cat)"/Zn (cat=catecholate) was found to be specifically active. This method was applied to the addition reactions of radicals to alkenes and exhibited high generality and yields.