Palladium-catalyzed gaseous CO-free carbonylative C–C bond activation of cyclobutanones

A palladium-catalyzed carbonylative C-C bond activation reaction of cyclobutanones proceeding by C-C bond cleavage, ring-opening, and amino- or alkoxycarbonylation is reported here. Two C-C bonds and one C-O or C-N bond are created to afford a variety of indanones bearing ester or amide groups under gas-free conditions by using phenyl formate and benzene-1,3,5-triyl triformate (TFBen) as convenient CO surrogates.