Exploring the Oxidative Cyclization of Substituted N-Aryl Enamines: Pd-Catalyzed Formation of Indoles from Anilines

摘要

The direct Pd-catalyzed oxidative coupling of two CH-bonds within N-aryl-enamines 1 allows the efficient formation of differently substituted indoles 2. In this cross-dehydrogenative coupling, many different functional groups are tolerated and the starting material N-aryl-enamines 1 can be easily prepared in one step from commercially available anilines. In addition, the whole sequence can also be run in a one-pot fashion. Optimization data, mechanistic insight, substrate scope, and applications are reported in this full paper.