Palladium-Catalyzed Deaminative Phenanthridinone Synthesis from Aniline via C-H Bond Activation

This work reports palladium-catalyzed phenanthridinone synthesis using the coupling of aniline and amide by formation of C-C and C-N bonds in a one-pot fashion via dual C-H bond activation. It involves simultaneous cleavage of four bonds and the formation of two new bonds. The present protocol is ligand-free, takes place under mild reaction conditions, and is environmentally benign as nitrogen gas and water are the only side products. This transformation demonstrates a broad range of aniline and amide substrates with different functional groups and has been scaled up to gram level.