Next, we were contemplating the possibility of synthesizing important unsymmetrical diarylated ketones motifs using the benzhydryl triarylphosphonium salts 11 (Figure ). We imagined that this could be achieved by the generation of phosphorus ylide (16) from salt 11 followed by a direct oxidation of this ylide (16). Our initial optimization efforts focused on the formation of benzophenone 14a from benzhydryl triarylphosphonium salts 11q and a base under O2 (balloon), via the corresponding ylide 16. After many experiments, the use of NaH in dry acetonitrile (CH3CN) were found to be the best reaction condition to obtain the ketone product 14a with yield of 92%.