An international team of scientists herein wish to report on a seminal EAS functionalization approach to unearth a mono-substituted benzene (1), tentatively named bromobenzene.
Scheme 1. Synthesis of bromobenzene
It is noteworthy that the depicted synthesis is strictly linear. According to preliminary results, the addition of a catalytic amount of Lewis acid is crucial in obtaining a decent yield. It is at this stage believed that the product may be further refined by the means of vacuum distillation.
This discovery marks a new era in C-H activation.
Instant JACS paper!
yes, it’s totally JACS
nice humor)
You would be interested to know that a catalytic amount of Lewis acid can be replaced with a catalytic amount of pyridine. (Or with a catalytic amount of Fe powder). HPyr+ Br3- formed in situ is a good enough catalyst for the reaction. (Dtto FeBr3). Pyridine catalysis has the advantage of being mild enough to avoid polybromination of benzene, hence only small excess of benzene is needed
Sorry but I cannot resist a chance to spoil your joke.
C-H activation is dear to my heart, but I had a supervisor once who said that “In the stone age, they used to do C-H activation without metals.”
At first glance that sounds stupid, since EAS isn’t C-H activation, but if you think about it, the stone age didn’t have metal tools, so it has some logic behind it.
Interesting retrosynthesis, btw.
How can EAS not be C-H activation?
could somebody tell me what does EAS mean?
electrophilic aromatic substitution
[…] chuckled a bit when I saw this graphical abstract. I like bromobenzene; I have written about it […]