Synthesis of imidazoles from alkenes
Abstract
Alkenes are converted into imidazoles through their epoxides by a sequence involving ring-opening with readily available 2-tributylstannyltetrazoles (8), dehydration of the resulting alcohols (9) using methyltriphenoxyphosphonium iodide in an improved procedure to give 1-alkenyltetrazoles (12), which give imidazoles (17) on photolysis.