Palladium-Catalyzed Ortho C–H Arylation of Aniline Carbamates with Diazonium Salts under Mild Conditions: Expedient Synthesis of Carbazole Alkaloids

[Image: see text] Despite the significant progress, C–H arylation with aryldiazonium salts is a major challenge because of the faster rate of oxidative addition compared to the C–H insertion, leading to a deleterious homocoupling product. Recently, this limitation has been overcome by merging a photoredox catalyst with transition-metal catalysts which proceeds through a distinct single electron-transfer mechanism. However, we have observed that the photoredox catalyst is not necessary for the C–H arylation of aniline rather chemical reactivity can be controlled by tuning the electronic nature of the substrate. We report, herein, a palladium-catalyzed C–H arylation of aniline carbamates with aryldiazonium salts under external oxidant, acid, base free conditions at room temperature. Mechanistic studies suggest that the present reaction proceeds through a directed electrophilic metalation pathway which is the slowest step. However, the oxidative addition may take place through either ionic (2e(–)) or radical (1e(–)) pathway to generate hypervalent Pd(IV) or Pd(III) intermediate, respectively. A facile reductive elimination from the hypervalent palladium complex furnishes the C–H arylation product under mild conditions. The carbamate directing group is easily removed from the product to obtain the corresponding ortho-arylated aniline, which is a precursor for plethora of carbazole alkaloids and other biologically active molecules. The reaction is scaled-up to gram scale to furnish the desired product in comparable yields. Finally, we have applied this C–H arylation methodology for the synthesis of series of carbazole alkaloids such as clausine V, clauszoline K, O-methoxymahanine, and O-methylmurrayamine-D.