See: http://www.google.com/patents/US20140094607 http://www.google.com/patents/US20140094607 Potassium tert-butoxide (affectionately "KOtBu") isn't any sort o

See: http://www.google.com/patents/US20140094607 http://www.google.com/patents/US20140094607 Potassium tert-butoxide (affectionately "KOtBu") isn't any sort of special potassium compound. Basically KOtBu is a really, really strong base, which is called a "non-nucleophilic base" because it doesn't undergo certain kinds of reactions (generally bad ones). In fact according to the patent it isn't required at all; you could use the non-metallic (but very expensive) BEMP or something. The patent concerns the "silylation" of "aromatic" compounds, which is sort of involved but in essence normally one would silylate -> react -> desilylate in order to achieve a reaction that would normally be outcompeted by a faster reaction. It's rare (but not unheard of) that the silylated compound is actually the target, so while I expect such a reaction to be useful, it doesn't seem transformative on its own. However using KOtBu instead of Pd certainly makes anything a lot cheaper, and maybe somebody had every wrinkle ironed out but this one in some process somewhere.