FeCl·6HO as a Mild Catalyst for Nucleophilic Substitution of Symmetrical Bis(indoyl)methanes.

In this paper, unsymmetrical bis(indolyl)methane (BIM) and 3-alkylindole derivatives are smoothly synthesized from symmetrical BIMs with a variety of nucleophiles including heteroaromatic/aromatic compounds, allylsilane and alkynylsilane. FeCl·6HO is found to be a mild and highly effective catalyst for this nucleophilic substitution reaction in which -methyl-2-phenylindole behaves as a good leaving group in the C-C bond cleavage reaction. The operational ease, nonexpensive and environmentally friendly catalyst, mild reaction conditions, broad functional group tolerance, and scalability of this reaction strategy are advantages of the present procedure.