Silver-catalyzed arylation of (hetero)arenes by oxidative decarboxylation of aromatic carboxylic acids.

A long-standing challenge in Minisci reactions is achieving the arylation of heteroarenes by oxidative decarboxylation of aromatic carboxylic acids. To address this challenge, the silver-catalyzed intermolecular Minisci reaction of aromatic carboxylic acids was developed. With an inexpensive silver salt as a catalyst, this new reaction enables a variety of aromatic carboxylic acids to undergo decarboxylative coupling with electron-deficient arenes or heteroarenes regardless of the position of the substituents on the aromatic carboxylic acid, thus eliminating the need for ortho-substituted aromatic carboxylic acids, which were a limitation of previously reported methods.