Ethylenediamine/Cu(OAc)2 · H2O-catalyzed cyanation of aryl halides with K4[Fe(CN)6]

Commercially available and inexpensive ethylenediamine/Cu(OAc) 2   ·   H 2 O has been found to be a highly effective catalyst system for the cyanation of aryl bromides in the solvent of NMP. At the same time, the highly activated aryl chlorides with NO 2 groups gave corresponding benzonitriles in good yields. Similar to the previous observation, it is not necessary to use an excess of K 4 [Fe(CN) 6 ] in the cyanation reaction (only 20   mol% of K 4 [Fe(CN) 6 ] was used). In other hand, a more remarkable KI-accelerated effect was observed for the cyanation reaction: the addition of KI increased the yield from 6% to 91% in the cyanation of bromobenzene.