A method that cleanly converts the 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazole products of the copper-catalysed 'click' dipolar cycloaddition reaction of benzyl azide with terminal alkynes into 1,5-disubstituted triazoles is described. Selective N-alkylation of 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazoles under microwave irradiation is followed by debenzylation of the resulting 1,3,4-trisubstituted triazolium cations by treatment with potassium tert-butoxide.Key words 1,2,3-triazole, debenzylation, microwave, disubstituted, rearrangement In recent years the Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction of organic azides to alkynes has gained a great deal of interest following the introduction of transition metal catalysis by Meldal in 2001. 1 The Sharpless and Meldal laboratories independently reported that the use of a catalyst vastly improved both the regioselectivity and rate of the reaction, resulting in an extremely effective method for the synthesis of disubstituted 1,2,3-triazoles (e.g. Scheme 1). 2,3 Scheme 1: Preparation of 1,3,4-trisubstituted 1,2,3-triazolium salts by a microwave-assisted selective N-akylation reaction.Although relatively unreactive, substituted 1,2,3-triazoles, available through inexpensive copper-catalysed 'click' cycloaddition (CuAAC) reactions, are of value in a wide variety of research fields, including materials science 4 and synthetic chemistry, 5 as a ligating moiety in organometallic chemistry, 6 for cyclopropanation chemistry, 7 and as a pharmacophore in medicinal chemistry; 8 they possess a range of biological activities, including antifungal, 9 antibody, 10 anti-cancer, 11 anti-