N-Acyloxyphthalimides as Nitrogen Radical Precursors in the Visible Light Photocatalyzed Room Temperature C-H Amination of Arenes and Heteroarenes

This paper reports a room temperature visible light photocatalyzed method for the C-H amination of arenes and heteroarenes. A key enabling advance in this work is the design of N-acyloxyphthalimides as precursors to nitrogen-based radical intermediates for these transformations. A broad substrate scope is presented, including the selective meta-amination of pyridine derivatives. A radical aromatic substitution mechanism is proposed.