NaCl as Catalyst and Water as Solvent: Highly -Selective Olefination of Methyl Substituted -Heteroarenes with Benzyl Amines and Alcohols.

Oxidative coupling of benzylamines and alcohols with methyl substituted -heteroarenes such as quinolines and quinoxalines has been achieved using chloride, a sea abundant anion as the catalyst for practical synthesis of a wide range of -disubstituted olefins in aqueous medium. Detailed mechanistic studies and control experiments were carried out to deduce the reaction mechanism which indicated that formed ClO is the active form of the catalyst. We have successfully carried out a 1 g scale reaction using this methodology, and five pharmaceutically relevant conjugated olefins were also synthesized by this method in moderate to good yields.