The design, synthesis, and properties of an extremely acid-labile backbone amide linker based on a regiospecifically substituted tetraalkoxynaphthaldehyde core are presented. This handle enables cleavage of peptide backbone amides (secondary amides) off a solid support usingas little as 0.5% TFA in CH
2Cl
2. This proceeds without cleavage of
tert-butyl ethers and
tert-butyl esters. The design is based on a DFT studythat predicted the most stabile alkoxy-substituted methyl naphthyl carbocation.