N,N-Dimethylformamide (DMF): An Inexpensive and Attractive Reactant

: The development of simple, atom-economical, and sustainable methodologies for the construction of various functional molecules from easily available substrates has been of great interest in synthetic chemistry. N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) is an inexpensive, abundant solvent and industrial raw material. It is considered as an effective polar solvent and a versatile reagent in synthetic transformations. During the past few decades, many significant and attractive achievements have been made in the fields of DMF as a reactant. The mini-review will mainly summarize recent advances in the applicants of DMF as a multipurpose building block in synthetic reactions.

Synthesis of 3-Halo-7-azaindoles through a 5-endo-dig Electrophilic Cyclization Reaction

Biologically useful 7-azaindoles were synthesized by electrophilic cyclization of 3-alkynyl-N,N-dimethylpyridine-2-amines with molecular iodine. By this simple atom-economical approach under ambient reaction conditions, a library of interesting 3-iodo-7-azaindoles were synthesized in high yields. To synthesize the corresponding 3-bromo- and 3-chloro-7-azaindoles, an environmentally benign copper-mediated cyclization was employed, with inexpensive, nontoxic, and noncorrosive sodium chloride and sodium bromide as the sources of chlorine and bromine, respectively.

Atom-Economic Synthesis of 4-Pyrones from Diynones and Water

Transition-metal-free synthesis of 4-pyrones via TfOH-promoted nucleophilic addition/cyclization of diynones and water has been developed. This transformation is simple, atom economical and environmentally benign, providing rapid and efficient access to substituted 4-pyrones.

A Survey of Quantitative Descriptions of Molecular Structure

Numerical characterization of molecular structure is a first step in many computational analysis of chemical structure data. These numerical representations, termed descriptors, come in many forms, ranging from simple atom counts and invariants of the molecular graph to distribution of properties, such as charge, across a molecular surface. In this article we first present a broad categorization of descriptors and then describe applications and toolkits that can be employed to evaluate them. We highlight a number of issues surrounding molecular descriptor calculations such as versioning and reproducibility and describe how some toolkits have attempted to address these problems.

Highly efficient one-pot synthesis of trisubstituted imidazoles under catalyst-free conditions

Operationally simple, atom economical, and scalable synthesis of 2,4,5-trisubstituted imidazoles from benzil, aldehydes, and ammonium acetate is shown to proceed readily in methanol with high yield. The scope of the reaction is quite broad; a variety of aromatic and aliphatic activated and unactivated aldehydes have all been shown to be viable substrates for this reaction. Excellent yields and purity were obtained by washing the products with hot ethanol.