An expeditious green route toward 2-aryl-4-phenyl-1H-imidazoles

BACKGROUND: Azaheterocycles are an important class of compounds because of their highly potent medicinal activities, and the imidazole subcategory is of special interest in regard to drug discovery research. FINDINGS: An expeditious synthetic protocol of 2-aryl-4-phenyl-1H-imidazoles has been accomplished by reacting phenylglyoxal monohydrate, ammonium acetate, and aldehyde under sonication. Following this green approach a series of 2-aryl-4-phenyl-1H-imidazoles has been synthesized using diversely substituted aldehydes. CONCLUSIONS: A rapid and simple synthetic procedure to synthesize diversely substituted 2-aryl-4-phenyl-1H-imidazoles has been reported. Other salient features of this protocol include milder conditions, atom-economy, easy extraction, and minimum wastes. The present procedure may find application in the synthesis of biologically active molecules. [Figure: see text]