Biaryls from aryl diazonium salts

The Pschorr Reaction allows the preparation of biaryl tricyclics by intramolecular substitution of one arene by an aryl radical. This radical is generated in situ from an aryl diazonium salt by copper catalysis. Although excess copper salts are used, the yield is normally moderate. 

When Pschorr reported more than a century ago on the first intramolecular homolytic aromatic substitution [25], he showed that biaryls could be readily prepared by intramolecular homolytic aromatic substitution using reactive aryl radicals and arenes as radical acceptors. The aryl radicals were generated by treatment of arene-diazonium salts with copper(l) ions. Today, this reaction and related processes are referred to as Pschorr reactions. It was later found that radical biaryl synthesis could be conducted without copper salts by photochemical or thermal generation of the aryl radical from the corresponding diazonium salt [26], Moreover, the reduction of aryl diazonium salts offers another route to generate reactive aryl radicals. Hence, electrochemistry [27], titanium(lll) ions [28], Fe(II)-salts [29], tet-rathiafulvalene [30] and iodide [31] have each been used successfully for the reduction of diazonium salts to generate the corresponding aryl radicals [32]. As an example, the iodide-induced cycUzation of diazonium salt 6 to phenanthrene derivative 7 is presented in Scheme 13.3 [31]. For further information on the... 

Similar reactions have been carried out with naphthalene and thiophene. The method has been employed only to a limited extent 23 since its discovery, probably because it involves the isolation of the dry diazonium salts and because a number of aryldiazonium salts (from o- and p-toluidine and /3-naphthylamine) gave no biaryls but only the corresponding aryl halides. 

As shown in other sections of this chapter, overall attention has shifted from diazonium salts as aryl radical sources to bromo- or iodobenzenes. One of the few recent attempts to improve the classical Pschorr cyclization using diazonium ions as starting materials led to the discovery of new catalysts [119]. Results from a first samarium-mediated Pschorr type show the variety of products that can be expected from intramolecular biaryl syntheses under reductive conditions (Scheme 22). Depending on the substitution pattern of the target aromatic core and the reaction conditions, either the spirocycle 60, the biphenyl 61, or the dearomatized biphenyl 62 were formed as major product from 63 [120]. 

Another, especially historically important copper-mediated radical aryl-aryl bond forming reaction is the Pschorr reaction (Gomberg-Bachmann reaction), which has been first described in 1896 for the preparation of phenanthrene and its derivatives [85]. Later, in 1924, Gomberg and Bachmann described an intermolecular version of this reaction and prepared several biphenyl derivatives in moderate yield [86]. The reaction is initiated by formation of diazonium salts from aromatic amines, which release nitrogen upon reaction with copper salts. The intermediary formed aryl radial then undergoes the desired coupling reaction and allows the isolation of biaryl compounds. An example of such a reaction is outlined in Scheme 12.23 [87],... 

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