Cyanation of Anilines to Aryl Nitriles Using tert‐Butyl Isocyanide: A Simple and Copper‐free Procedure

In this manuscript, a simple and copper-free procedure for the synthesis of aryl nitrile derivatives from anilines is described. Under the improved protocol, the anilines were reacted with tert-butyl isocyanide under a mild reaction condition without the use of solvents and copper catalyst to synthesize benzonitriles. This copper-free Sandmeyer-type reaction could tolerate a range of anilines bearing different functional groups and also can be conducted even without the exclusion of air. In addition, this method has afforded the aryl nitriles in moderate to good yields (52-81%). The obtained results in this study reveal that the tert-butyl isocyanide as a potential cyanide source for the cyanation reaction.