The syntheses of 2-bromopyrazine, 2,4-dibromopyrimidines, and 3-bromo-6-phenylpyrazine were improved and their metalation with lithium alkylamides was studied.J. Heterocyclic Chem., 42, 509 (2005).The ortho directed metalation of various halogenated diazines has been extensively studied [1], however only one example of metalation of a bromo diazine: the 5-bromopyrimidine, has been reported in the literature by Kress [2] (Scheme 1).In the pyridine series, the metalation reaction of -2, -3 and -4-bromopyridines has been investigated [3,4] and was generally successful with 1 equivalent of lithium diisopropylamide at -78 °C in tetrahydrofuran.Our purpose was to study the metalation reaction of bromo derivatives of diazines. An example for each diazine series was chosen: 2-bromopyrazine, 2,6-dibromopyrimidine and 3-bromo-6-phenylpyridazine. This choice was mainly governed by the accessibility to these bromo derivatives.Synthesis of 2-Bromopyrazine 1.After completion of this work, a synthesis of 1 was published by Schlosser [5] using chloropyrazine and bromotrimethylsilane, with a 49 % yield. We tested several methods: direct metalation of pyrazine [6], Craig's method [7] starting from aminopyrazine, bromine-chlorine exchange with potassium bromide [8], or phosphorous tribromide [9].All these methods had some drawbacks (poor yields or difficulty to purify) and all the things considered, we chose the old method of Spoerri [10] (Scheme 2) starting from pyrazinone which was synthesized by the method of Konokahara [11] using glycinamide chlorhydrate and glyoxal with a 70 % yield.The synthesis of Spoerri used a mixture of phosphorous oxybromide and pentabromide as brominating agent and gave a mixture of monobromo and dibromopyrazine. We did not use pentabromide to avoid the formation of the dibromo derivative. With 2 equivalents of phosphorous oxybromide, no dibromopyrazine was formed and we obtained a 46 % yield of 1 after distillation.Synthesis of 2,4-Dibromopyrimidine 2.The same route as above was used starting from uracil. This reaction was described by Gronowitz [12] with a 10 % yield. We were able to improve this yield to 48 % by changing the purification process (column chromatography instead of distillation (Scheme 3).Synthesis of 3-Bromo-6-phenylpyridazine 7.Starting from 2,6-dichloropyridazine 3, the following route was developed (Scheme 4).