Efficient visible light mediated synthesis of quinolin-2(1H)-ones from quinoline N-oxides

Abstract

Quinolin-2(1H)-ones are one of the important classes of compounds due to their prevalence in natural products and in pharmacologically useful compounds. Here we present an unconventional and hitherto unknown photocatalytic approach to their synthesis from easily available quinoline-N-oxides. This reagent free highly atom economical photocatalytic method, with low catalyst loading, high yield and no undesirable by-product, provides an efficient greener alternative to all conventional synthesis reported to date. The robustness of the methodology has been successfully demonstrated with easy scaling up to the gram scale.