“…Of these, 2-hydroxyimino-2phenylacetonitriles (2) are useful building blocks for the construction of polynitrogen organic substances, especially for the synthesis of peptides and/or nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds (Itoh et al, 1975;Kunai et al, 1990;Neel and Zhao, 2018;Alam et al, 2020). A few methods are available for the synthesis of these compounds, including the condensation of phenylketone/benzaldehyde and the cyanidation of their secondary products (Schemes 1A,B) (Ma et al, 1999;Uysal, 2010;Lemercier and Pierce, 2014;Kryshenko et al, 2016;Ushakov et al, 2019), the nitrosylation and nitridation of benzyl-cyanide (Schemes 1C,D) (Dubery et al, 1999;Bohle and Perepichka, 2009;Bohle et al, 2013;Neel and Zhao, 2018), and the nitration and nitrosation of styrene (Schemes 1E,F) (Kunai et al, 1990;Alam et al, 2020). However, these methods suffer from several drawbacks, such as the use of toxic reagents, rigorous reaction conditions, the cost of starting materials, multistep processes, and/or low yields.…”