Experimental study demonstrates efficient aerobic cross-coupling of benzofurans with indoles using iron and sodium iodide catalysts, highlighting a sustainable route to heterobiaryls.
Benzofuran-indole heterobiaryls are important structural motifs with widespread applications. However, their synthesis is limited to methods requiring Pd catalysts and prefunctionalized substrates. Herein, we report the first general oxidative cross-coupling of benzofurans with indoles under aerobic, Fe(III)-catalyzed conditions with NaI as a catalytic promoter. The reaction displays wide substrate scope and high chemo- and regioselectivity. Preliminary mechanistic experiments indicate a single-electron-transfer (SET)-based mechanism with radical cation-nucleophile coupling as the crucial bond-forming step.
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Kamble et al. (2026) studied this question.
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