A Mild Copper-Catalyzed Amination of Haloarenes

Significance

The direct amination of aryl halides is the most straightforward method for the preparation of polysubstituted anilines. While a number of highly efficient catalytic procedures has already been described, the development of new mild and versatile protocols for this transformation is a challenging task. Herein, the authors describe a new version of Cu-catalyzed amination of aryl bromides and iodides, which uses diketones, a rather unusual class of ligands for metal catalysis. The procedure is very simple, does not require harsh conditions or expensive catalysts and offers uniformly high yields of products.