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of surface-active compounds. They form a colloidal, micellar, or
other organized phase and thereby, solubilize the organic reagents
inside the hydrophobic interior of the organized aqueous media
and allow the reaction to occur. The use of surfactants as catalysts
is widespread, and has been investigated in detail for various reac-
tions in aqueous media.19,20 In particular, dehydration reactions,
which otherwise need anhydrous conditions and thus one of the
most challenging tasks to accomplish in water, have been success-
fully carried out by our group21 and others22 in aqueous media in
the presence of surfactants. Synthesis of benzimidazoles involves
a dehydration step and micellar condition has been successfully
utilized, separately, by Bahrami et al.17f and Ghosh and co-work-
ers17g for the construction of this heterocyclic system in the pres-
ence of mildly basic SDS as catalyst. It is interesting to note that
both the methods predominantly yield 1,2-disubstituted benzimi-
dazoles. As the literature survey reveals that acidic catalysts favor
2-substituted benzimidazoles over 1,2-disubstituted benzimidaz-
oles,15a,b,j we assumed, acidic surfactant, DBSA (dodecylbenzene-
sulfonic acid) could be effective in achieving selectivity toward
2-substituted benzimidazole derivatives. As part of our continued
efforts on the development of safe and ‘green’ protocols for organic
reactions in aqueous media,21 we report herein, DBSA catalyzed
chemoselective synthesis of 2-substituted benzimidazoles in aque-
ous media in which iodine acts as co-catalyst to enhance selectivity
of the desired product (Scheme 1). The primary roles of DBSA are
(a) to assist in solubilizing the organic substrates in aqueous media
by forming micelles or other organized phase and (b) to act as a
catalyst to promote condensation of o-diaminoarene with the
aldehyde.
We started our work with a focus on optimizing the reaction
conditions. In this direction, the formation of the emulsion droplets
was confirmed by taking optical micrograph of different surfac-
tants containing aqueous solutions of reactants before the reaction
would actually proceed (Fig. 1a). Dynamic light scattering (DLS)
experiments of those solutions revealed that the corresponding
size of emulsion droplets is in the nanometer range (Fig. 1b). We
screened catalytic activity of six surfactants on a model reaction
between equimolar mixture of o-phenylenediamine (1a) and benz-
aldehyde (2a) to find out the best catalyst that induces higher
selectivity to 2-phenylbenzimidazoles. To our delight, all six sur-
factants (DBSA, SDS, CTAB, Triton X100, Tween 20, and Tween
80) could catalyze the above reaction at a variable rate to produce
the desired products (3a and 4a) in different proportions indicating
a micellar condition is useful to carry out this condensation reac-
tion (Table 1). As expected, DBSA showed highest selectivity (Ta-
ble 1, entry 1) among all toward 2-phenylbenzimidazole (3a)
with about 10% of undesired 1-benzyl-2-phenyl-1H-benzo[d]imid-
azole (4a). At elevated temperatures, the rate of the reaction was
increased with slightdrop in the selectivity (Table 1, entry 2). SDS
was found to be the most suitable catalyst in terms of time re-
quired for the completion of the reaction with much reduced selec-
tivity toward 2-phenylbenzimidazole (3a) (Table 1, entry 4). The
reaction was slower and selectivity was poor for other cases (Ta-
ble 1, entries 6–9). We also examined the chemoselectivity of
SDS and DBSA on the same reaction upon the addition of 2 equiv
of benzaldehyde at one portion. In case of SDS as catalyst, the re-
sult was close to what is reported by others17f showing pro-
nounced selectivity toward 1,2-disubstituted benzimidazole (4a)
but about 10% of 2-phenylbenzimidazole (3a) was also obtained
(Table 1, entry 5). On the other hand, the reaction was relatively
slow in the presence of DBSA producing nearly equal proportion
of both 3a and 4a even after 6 h (Table 1, entry 3). From the above
results we inferred that acidic nature of DBSA and slow reaction
rate are helpful for the formation of 2-substituted benzimidazoles.
The excellent chemoselectivity induced by DBSA inspired us to
investigate this transformation in detail. Formation of some
amount of undesired 1,2-disubstituted benzimidazole was still
our concern. Literature survey revealed that use of oxidizing agent
under micellar condition17f increases selectivity toward 2-substi-
tuted benzimidazoles by quick conversion of monoimine into the
aromatic system before diimine would form, which is the interme-
diate of 1,2-disubstituted benzimidazole.16a In this regard, various
nonhazardous, easily available, cheap oxidizing agents are chosen
to accelerate oxidative aromatization process from monoimine
and thereby, minimize formation of 4a. Initially, stoichiometric
amounts of oxidizing agents such as I2, H2O2, p-benzoquinone,
ammonium persulfate, and oxone were used separately for con-
densation of equimolar mixture of o-phenylenediamine (1a) and
benzaldehyde (2a) in the presence of 10 mol % of DBSA in water
to find out their influence in the final outcome on the product ratio
(Table 2). Selectivity was improved at various extents toward the
formation of 3a in each case. However, both hydrogen peroxide
and iodine were found equally suitable to bring about higher selec-
tivity as well as to reduce reaction time (Table 2, entries 1 and 5). A
few more reactions were carried out with different aromatic alde-
hydes under same condition in the presence of both I2 and H2O2,23
and based on the observed selectivity and considering the fact that
iodine is milder and easier to handle, it was selected as an additive
for further study. We presumed that the role of iodine could be
twofold: (a) to act as Lewis acid to increase electrophilicity of the
imine bond and thus, facilitate cyclization process and (b) to oxi-
dize dihydroimidazole to corresponding aromatic system. In order
to optimize the amount of iodine required for this condensation,
we carried out reactions with various proportions of iodine at sub-
stoichiometric level keeping other conditions same. We were de-
lighted to observe that use of 10 mol % of iodine is equally
effective as that of stoichiometric amount to impose similar selec-
tivity toward 2-phenylbenzimidazole (Table 2, entry 7). This indi-
cates that the primary role of iodine is to act as Lewis acid24 to
expedite cyclization process and presumably, oxidation is mostly
done by the dissolved oxygen15h,18a in the system. We also exam-
ined that use of more than 10% of DBSA does not enhance che-
moselectivity (or yield) (Table 2, entry 8). Neither the use of less
than 10% of DBSA is suitable for this transformation (Table 2, entry
9). Therefore, we decided to use 10 mol % of iodine as co-catalyst
along with DBSA (10 mol %) for this condensation reaction to
achieve
highest
chemoselectivity
toward
2-substituted
benzimidazoles.
To test the generality of this method, a series of aromatic alde-
hydes was treated with various o-diaminoarenes under optimal
reaction conditions.25 The developed process was found to be
excellent in terms of yield and selectivity resulting in a variety of
2-substituted benzimidazoles in very high yield (Table 3). The
aldehydes with electron donating (Table 3, entries 6, 7, 24, 31,
etc.) as well as with electron withdrawing groups (Table 2, entries
2, 15, 22, 30, etc.) participated in the reaction uniformly with no
significant distinction with regard to the yields of the target prod-
ucts. Similarly, no distinct substituent effect was observed on the
yields of 2-substituted benzimidazoles by varying substituents in
o-diaminoarenes. Even sensitive substrates like furfuraldehyde
(Table 3, entries 9, 19 and 25) produced the desired product
without any difficulty. The present method was fairly applicable
to aliphatic aldehydes as well (Table 3, entry 11, 28, etc.). How-
ever, reactions were sluggish for water soluble aldehydes viz.
NH2
NH2
N
N
DBSA (10 mol%)
N
R'
R
+
R'
+ R' CHO
I2 (10 mol%)
H2O, rt, stir
N
H
R
R
3
2
4
1
R'
80-94%
0-5%
Scheme 1. DBSA catalyzed synthesis of 2-substituted benzimidazoles.