A novel approach toward the synthesis of some new tridentate Schiff bases from anil-like compounds

A novel method was developed for synthesizing a series of new three dentate Schiff base ligands starting from hydroxynaphthalidene pyrimidinyl amines with o-phenylenediamines or o-aminophenol or 2-amino-3-hydroxy-pyri-dine in the presence of formic acid catalyst under solvent-free conditions. In these reactions [1+1] condensation product as half-unit ligand was obtained. Moreover, the reaction of hydroxynaphthalidene pyrimidinyl amines with 3,4-diamino-pyridine and 1,8-naphthalenediamine lead to the formation of C2-naphthylated imidazopyridine and dihydropyrimidine, respectively. The attractive features of this protocol are: use of inexpensive catalyst, operationally simple, short reaction times, easy handling, and good yields