Amide bonds are essential building blocks in bioactive molecules and polymer materials, offering unique properties and potential in drug synthesis. While transamidation represents an alternate and powerful synthetic tool for amide bond formation, transamidation with weakly nucleophilic aromatic amines under extremely mild conditions remains a remarkable challenge. Herein, visible-light-driven photoredox-catalyzed transamidation of amides with aromatic amines (primary and secondary) has been developed through radical-radical cross-coupling. This transformation proceeds efficiently at room temperature without the need for any external additive.
Qu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.