Reduction of Carboxylic Acids to Alcohols via Manganese(I) Catalyzed Hydrosilylation.

The reduction of carboxylic acids to the respective alcohols, in mild conditions, was achieved using [MnBr(CO)] as the catalyst and bench stable PhSiH as the reducing agent. It was shown that the reaction with the earth-abundant metal catalyst could be performed either with a catalyst loading as low as 0.5 mol %, rare with the use of [MnBr(CO)], or on a gram scale employing only 1.