In recent years, bridge triptycene has important applications in organic synthesis, biology, and materials. In particular, naphthacene, with its rigid scaffold, has been used as a key component in emission and viridicatumtoxin sensors [
1]. Complex triptycenes are quite difficult to prepare due to their insolubility in common organic solvents [
2,
3]. Diels-Alder reaction was facilitated by reagent with electron deficient structure, the acene cores could be used to achieve semiconducting materials [
4]. Cycloaddition between dienophiles and anthracenes is a common method for constructing naphthacene derivatives [
5]. In general, 9-10-addition and 1, 4-addition products are generally obtained by considering the high localization of
π-electron at the 9, 10-position and the secondary orbital interactions. However, few reports are available on the generation of anti-1, 4-addition products as the major species under mild conditions [
6]. Ma reported an AlCl
3-assisted Diels– Alder reaction to obtain anti-1, 4-additions between
N-maleimides and anthracene derivatives, but the 9, 10-addition product is still observed [
7]. Benzynes produced by the thermal cycloisomerization of tetrayne substrates are an important reactive intermediate in organic synthesis because they have unique bond angles (sp hybridized carbon) and a benzene ring structure; therefore, the reactions of benzynes with anthracenes can generate naphthacene building blocks [
8]. Herein, we demonstrated a [4 + 2] cycloaddition of hexadehydro-Diels–Alder (HDDA) derived benzyne [
9] with anthracene derivatives by tuning the electronic and steric effects that generally produces either 1, 4-adducts or anticipative 9, 10- adducts as the major products with regio- and stereo-selectivity in a green, metal-free catalysis and a high atom-economic manner (
Scheme 1) [
10]. This protocol is compatible with a variety of sensitive functional groups and allows the synthesis of highly substituted ethenonaphthacene derivatives with multiple aromatic rings and functionalizable structures [
11,
12].