Ethylenediamine/Cu(OAc)2 · H2O-catalyzed cyanation of aryl halides with K4[Fe(CN)6]

Commercially available and inexpensive ethylenediamine/Cu(OAc)2 · H2O has been found to be a highly effective catalyst system for the cyanation of aryl bromides in the solvent of NMP. At the same time, the highly activated aryl chlorides with NO2 groups gave corresponding benzonitriles in good yields. Similar to the previous observation, it is not necessary to use an excess of K4[Fe(CN)6] in the cyanation reaction (only 20 mol% of K4[Fe(CN)6] was used). In other hand, a more remarkable KI-accelerated effect was observed for the cyanation reaction: the addition of KI increased the yield from 6% to 91% in the cyanation of bromobenzene.