Copper-Catalyzed Synthesis of Substituted Quinazolines from Benzonitriles and 2-Ethynylanilines via Carbon-Carbon Bond Cleavage Using Molecular Oxygen.

A copper-catalyzed process for the synthesis of substituted quinazolines from benzonitriles and 2-ethynylanilines using molecular oxygen (O2 ) as sole oxidant is described. The mild catalytic system enabled the effective cleavage of the C-C triple bond and construction of new C-N and C-C bonds in one operation. Furthermore, the compound N, N-dimethyl-4-(2-(4-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)quinazolin-4-yl)aniline (3dj) exhibited obvious aggregation-induced emission phenomenon, and the fluorescence quantum yield (ΦF,film ) and lifetime (τfilm ) were measured to be 45.5% and 5.8 ns in thin films state, respectively.