Safe and Convenient CO Generation and its Applications in Organic Chemistry

Carbon monoxide is one of the most important C1 building blocks in organic synthesis, as it is abundantly available and highly beneficial in terms of atom economy. Despite its effectiveness, carbonylation chemistry is often hampered in research laboratories by the extreme toxicity of carbon monoxide. Recently, our group developed a safe and convenient way to generate CO, starting from formic acid, mesyl chloride and triethylamine,[1] by means of a two-chamber reactor system.[2] This methodology gave access to a novel heterocyclic scaffold through intramolecular carbonylative C–H functionalization of 1-(2-bromoaryl)-1,2,3-triazoles.[3] Furthermore, intramolecular aminocarbonylation of various substituted N-(2-bromophenyl)-1H-benzo[d]imidazol-2-amines resulted in a diverse set of benzimidazo[2,1-b]quinazolin-12(6H)-ones.