Practical and Scalable Synthesis of Borylated Heterocycles Using Bench-Stable Precursors of Metal-Free Lewis Pair Catalysts

A practical and scalable metal-free catalytic method for the borylation and borylative dearomatization of heteroarenes has been developed. This synthetic method uses inexpensive and conveniently synthesizable bench-stable precatalysts of the form 1-NHR2-2-BF3-C6H4, commercially and synthetically accessible heteroarenes as substrates, and pinacolborane as the borylation reagent. The preparation of several borylated heterocycles on 2 and 50 g scales was achieved under solvent-free conditions without the use of Schlenk techniques or a glovebox. A kilogram-scale borylation of one of the heteroarene substrates was also achieved using this cost-effective green methodology to exemplify the fact that our methodology can be conveniently implemented in fine chemical industries.