A Green and Straightforward Synthesis of 4′-Substituted Terpyridines

A part of the sentence in the fourth paragraph describing a previously published closely related synthesis of pyridyl-substituted 2,2¢:6¢,2¢¢-terpyridines using PEG300 as solvent by C. B. Smith, C. L. Raston and A. N. Sobolev (Green Chem. 2005, 650) was unfortunately deleted in the production process, leading to a false impression of the origin of the synthetic strategy. The correct paragraph is given below:

‘As a part of our work on the development of novel metallopolymers we have chosen poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as a versatile solvent for the efficient synthesis of substituted and functionalized terpyridine units 1 (see ref. 13 for a recent example by Raston et al.).13 Due to its non-toxicity, PEG has become a popular reaction medium in synthetic chemistry over the last number of years.14 Furthermore, this solvent fully meets the demands of green chemistry,15 as it is highly water-miscible and also potentially recyclable.’

Furthermore, the following references to additional prior work in this field should be added to reference 11: (b) Cave, G. W. V.; Raston C. L. J. Chem. Soc., Perkin Trans. 1 2001, 3258. (c) Cave, G. W. V.; Raston, C. L., Scott, J. L. Chem. Commun. 2001, 2159. (d) Rothenberg, G.; Downie, A. P.; Raston, C. L.; Scott, J. L. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2001, 123, 8701. (e) Cave, G. W. V.; Hardie, M. J.; Roberts, B. A.; Raston, C. L. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2001, 3227. (f) Raston, C. L.; Scott, J. L. Green Chem. 2000, 49. (g) Husson, J.; Migianu, E.; Beley, M.; Kirsch, G. Synthesis 2004, 267. (h) Cave, G. W. V.; Raston, C. L. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 468. We thank Dr. Christopher B. Smith for pointing out the related contributions to us.