The first synthesis of unsymmetric diaryliodonium salts directly from iodine and arenes is presented. The methodology provides diaryliodonium salts with the trimethoxyphenyl (TMP) moiety as dummy group. The protocol avoids the customary use of iodoarenes, which can be both expensive and toxic. Excess reagents are not required, and the reactions are performed under mild conditions. O-Arylations with these TMP salts were demonstrated to be highly chemoselective. D iaryliodonium salts (diaryl-λ 3 -iodanes) have become exceedingly popular electrophilic arylating reagents for a wide range of nucleophiles under both metal-free and metalcatalyzed conditions in the past decade.1 The interest in applications with these hypervalent iodine reagents was accelerated by the development of novel synthetic routes to diaryliodonium salts, making these easily available at low cost. Our first contribution to this field was the development of a general one-pot route to diaryliodonium salts from iodoarenes using the reagent system mCPBA/triflic acid (TfOH) in dichloromethane, which delivered diaryliodonium triflates in high yields within short reaction times.2 The reaction was extended to the direct synthesis of symmetric diaryliodonium salts from arenes and iodine, a cascade reaction involving iodination, oxidation, and electrophilic aromatic substitution between the arene and the formed iodine(III) intermediate.
2The triflic acid system proved to be too reactive for the synthesis of iodonium salts with both aryl moieties substituted with electron-donating groups. Such diaryliodonium salts have previously been synthesized from [hydroxy(tosyloxy)iodo]-benzene (HTIB, Koser's reagent) derivatives.3 HTIB can be synthesized from the corresponding iodoarene using mCPBA/ tosic acid, 4 and we recently improved the synthesis of HTIB derivatives 1 by two interconnected routes. They can either be obtained by mCPBA-oxidation of iodoarenes (Scheme 1a) or from iodine and arenes by initial oxidative iodination, followed by oxidation to yield 1 (Scheme 1b). 5 The iodination was found to be the most difficult step in this sequence, limiting the substrate scope to arenes with electron-donating (EDG) substituents, and trifluoroethanol (TFE) 6 was employed as cosolvent to increase the reaction rates.To overcome the scope limitations in our mCPBA/triflic acid system, we developed a one-pot synthesis of electron-rich diaryliodonium salts 2 from iodoarenes, which likely proceeds via in situ formation of iodine(III) compounds 1 (Scheme 2a).That transformation could also be extended to the use of iodine and arenes as starting materials (Scheme 2b). 7 The latter route tolerated only arenes with EDG substituents, and the synthesis of unsymmetric diaryliodonium salts (R 1 ≠ R 2 ) was unsuccessful due to product mixtures, further limiting the scope.
8Stuart and co-workers later modified our mCPBA/TsOH conditions into a sequential one-pot reaction with iodoarenes and trimethoxybenzene (TMP-H) to obtain unsymmetric