Palladium-Catalyzed Ortho C–H Arylation of Aniline Carbamates with Diazonium Salts under Mild Conditions: Expedient Synthesis of Carbazole Alkaloids

Despite the significant progress, C-H arylation with aryldiazonium salts is a major challenge because of the faster rate of oxidative addition compared to the C-H insertion, leading to a deleterious homocoupling product. Recently, this limitation has been overcome by merging a photoredox catalyst with transition-metal catalysts which proceeds through a distinct single electron-transfer mechanism. However, we have observed that the photoredox catalyst is not necessary for the C-H arylation of aniline rather chemical reactivity can be controlled by tuning the electronic nature of the substrate. We report, herein, a palladium-catalyzed C-H arylation of aniline carbamates with aryldiazonium salts under external oxidant, acid, base free conditions at room temperature. Mechanistic studies suggest that the present reaction proceeds through a directed electrophilic metalation pathway which is the slowest step. However, the oxidative addition may take place through either ionic (2e - ) or radical (1e - ) pathway to generate hypervalent Pd(IV) or Pd(III) intermediate, respectively. A facile reductive elimination from the hypervalent palladium complex furnishes the C-H arylation product under mild conditions. The carbamate directing group is easily removed from the product to obtain the corresponding ortho-arylated aniline, which is a precursor for plethora of carbazole alkaloids and other biologically active molecules. The reaction is scaled-up to gram scale to furnish the desired product in comparable yields. Finally, we have applied this C-H arylation methodology for the synthesis of series of carbazole alkaloids such as clausine V, clauszoline K, O -methoxymahanine, and O -methylmurrayamine-D.