Rapid and efficient copper-catalyzed Finkelstein reaction of (hetero)aromatics under continuous-flow conditions.

A general, rapid, and efficient method for the copper-catalyzed Finkelstein reaction of (hetero)aromatics has been developed using continuous flow to generate a variety of aryl iodides. The described method can tolerate a broad spectrum of functional groups, including N-H and O-H groups. Additionally, in lieu of isolation, the aryl iodide solutions were used in two distinct multistep continuous-flow processes (amidation and Mg-I exchange/nucleophilic addition) to demonstrate the flexibility of this method.