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A longstanding challenge in fundamental functional group interconversion has been the direct transformation of benzene into pyridine via nitrogen insertion and carbon deletion. Herein, we report a protocol for the transformation of aryl azides, easily accessible from their corresponding anilines, to 2-aminopyridines using blue light and oxygen. Mechanistic studies corroborate that the arene to pyridine conversion is achieved by nitrogen insertion into the benzene ring followed by oxidative carbon extrusion.
Patel et al. (2022) studied this question.