Metal-free Oxidative Cross-Coupling Reaction of Aromatic Compounds Containing Heteroatoms

The biaryl unit containing a heteroatom is a key structure in a large number of natural products and -conjugated organic systems. The cross-couplings can provide powerful methods for the construction of biaryls and heterobiaryls; thus the development of a new coupling method has been intensively studied by synthetic chemists. Therefore, the oxidative biaryl coupling reaction of arenes containing a heteroatom is a significantly attractive, convenient, and straightforward route to the synthesis of biaryls due to its operational simplicity avoiding the preparation of the corresponding halogenated and metallated arenes. In this report, recent progress in the field of metal-free oxidative cross-coupling reactions of aromatic compounds using hypervalent iodine(III) reagents, is presented.