Abstract
The palladium-catalysed direct 5-arylation of heteroaromatics bearing dicyanovinyls at C2 with aryl bromides via C-H bond functionalisation allows the synthesis of a variety of new conjugated systems in only one step. The nature of the solvent was found to be crucial to perform such arylations. In DMAc, complete decomposition of the dicyanovinyl derivatives was observed, whereas they were found to be stable in cyclopentyl methyl ether. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.