Copper-Catalyzed Modular Access to N-Fused Polycyclic Indoles and 5-Aroyl-pyrrol-2-ones via Intramolecular N-H/C-H Annulation with Alkynes: Scope and Mechanism Probes

The Summary of main observation and conclusion Copper-catalyzed intramolecular N-H/C-H annulation with alkynes has been developed. A variety of densely functionalized heterocycles, such as pyrrolo[1,2-a]indoles, indolo[1,2-c]quinazolin-2-ones, oxazolo[3,4-a]indoles, and imidazo[1,5-a]indoles, were synthesized in an atom- and step-economical manner, owing to the high modularized feature of aniline moiety, the linker moiety, as well as the alkyne moiety. By simply changing the oxidant from di-tert-butyl peroxide (DTBP) to 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO), the reaction could readily be transformed to the aminooxygenation pathway, which grabs one oxygen atom from the TEMPO to generate 5-aroyl-pyrrol-2-ones. Mechanistic experiments indicate that vinyl radical is involved in this reaction and an amidyl-radical-initiated radical cascade might be responsible for this transformation.