Palladium-Catalyzed Oxidative Cross-Coupling between Pyridine N-Oxides and Benzofuran derivatives

Carbon-carbon bond formation is a fundamental transformation. Recently, transition metal catalyzed cross coupling reactions have emerged as a powerful tool for this process [1]. The chemistry and application of pyridine N-oxides is widely studied due to their advantages as synthetic intermediates and their biological importance. They also have been used as protecting groups, auxiliary agents, oxidants, ligands in metal complexes and catalysts [2]. The N-O bond in pyridine N-oxides can be served as a scaffold for selective activation of C-H bond at 2 position of pyridine N-oxides. In this work, the cross coupling reaction between pyridine N-oxides and benzofurans is developed in the presence of Pd catalyst. In this method, no prefunctionalization is needed for the starting materials and the reaction proceeds through oxidative coupling mechanism