Dehydrogenative Azolation of Arenes in a Microflow Electrochemical Reactor

Abstract

The electrochemical synthesis of aryl azoles was performed for the first time in a microflow reactor. The reaction relies on the anodic oxidation of the arene partners making these substrates susceptible for C-H functionalization with azoles, thus requiring no homogeneous transition-metal-based catalysts. The synthetic protocol benefits from the implementation of a microflow setup, leading to shorter residence times (10 min), compared to previously reported batch systems. Various azolated compounds (22 examples) are obtained in good to excellent yields.