Sulfur-Promoted DABCO-Catalyzed Oxidative Trimerization of Phenylacetonitriles

J Org Chem. 2019 May 3;84(9):5907-5912. doi: 10.1021/acs.joc.9b00408. Epub 2019 Apr 17.

Abstract

By simply heating phenylacetonitriles 1 with elemental sulfur and DMSO in the presence of a catalytic amount of DABCO, we have performed an oxidative trimerization leading to polysubstituted pyrrole heterocycles 2 in excellent yields and the E configuration.