High-efficiency aminocarbonylation by introducing CO to a pressurized continuous flow reactor.

Halogenated aryl carboxylic acids were efficiently converted to the corresponding dicarboxylic acid monoamides by a one-step Pd-catalyzed aminocarbonylation in a micro/meso fluidic continuous flow reactor (X-Cube) operated at high pressure and high temperature with CO gas introduction. Reaction parameters (solvent, base, catalyst, pressure, temperature) were rapidly optimized in the reactions, which required less than 2 min. The method gave improved results over comparable batch techniques and is also suited to automated parallel syntheses of compound libraries.