Porphyrins are an important class of aromatic compounds that exhibit interesting optical and electrochemical properties and have attracted much attention as key components of functional materials and supramolecular architectures.[1] Creation of new porphyrins that feature intriguing properties is hence essential in developing the chemistry and applications of functional p-rich molecules. Peripheral functionalization of porphyrins can effectively modify the electronic and steric nature of the parent porphyrins, and is thus useful when investigating new porphyrins.[2] Among the possible functionalizations, arylation is promising since the introduced aryl groups can induce electronic perturbation through extension of p conjugation. Nucleophilic addition of aryllithium reagents to meso-unsubstituted porphyrins followed by oxidation can be employed for peripheral arylation reactions. [2c,d, 3] The nucleophilic arylation reaction inherently lacks functional-group compatibility because of the high reactivity of aryllithium reagents. Presently, the most reliable and chemoselective functionalization is based on palladiumcatalyzed cross-coupling reactions. [4,5] However, the crosscoupling strategy always requires preparation of halogenated [5,6] or metalated [7,8] porphyrins prior to arylation. More straightforward and efficient methods for peripheral arylation of porphyrins are thus needed.Transition-metal-catalyzed direct CÀH arylation of arenes with aryl halides has been rapidly emerging as a promising alternative to traditional cross-coupling arylations because preparations of aryl metal reagents can be omitted. [9][10][11] We envisaged that the direct arylation would be applicable to porphyrins. After extensive screening of porphyrin substrates and reaction conditions, we found that the pivalate-assisted conditions developed by Fagnou and co-workers, with some modifications, are effective for the synthesis of meso-free Ni II porphyrins. [9f, 10a] Treatment of the Ni II complex of 5,10,15-tris(3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl)porphyrin (1-Ni) with aryl halides in the presence of pivalic acid, [12] potassium carbonate, and catalytic amounts of palladium acetate and DavePhos in N,Ndimethylacetamide (DMA) at 100 8C resulted in diarylation with satisfactory efficiency (Table 1). To our surprise, the reaction proceeded exclusively at the b positions adjacent to the free meso position with excellent selectivity, and no mesoarylated products were detected. Although the sequential iridium-catalyzed borylation/palladium-catalyzed SuzukiMiyaura coupling had been the only efficient and practical method for b-selective arylation, [8] this sequence often suffers from the gradual protodeborylation of borylated porphyrins in protic media during purification and cross-coupling processes. Naturally, the present direct method is much more efficient and does not suffer from such demetalation. Moreover, this method is the first palladium-catalyzed reaction that selectively functionalizes the b positions of porphyrins.