Palladium-Catalyzed Direct C-4 Arylation of 2,5-Disubstituted Furans with Aryl Bromides

A simple and atom-economic procedure for the selective C-4 arylation of 2,5-disubstituted furans via C-H bond activation using electron-deficient aryl bromides is reported. Only 0.5 mol% of the commercially available dimeric (allene)palladium chloride, [Pd(C3H5)Cl](2), was employed as catalyst. This environmentally attractive procedure has been found to be tolerant to a variety of functional groups on the aryl bromide such as carbonyl, nitrile, nitro, fluoro, ester or trifluoromethyl.