Zinc Chloride Catalyzed Regioselective Nitration of Aromatic Hydrocarbons Using Tetrachlorosilane-Sodium Nitrate Homogeneous System

The development of a new silane reagent derived from tetrachlorosilane (TCS) was applied in the present work. TCS-sodium nitrate (NaNO3) binary reagent and zinc chloride (ZnCl2) were reported here as a homogeneous nitrating system. The later was used for the efficient mono nitration, in most cases, with high para-regioselectivity. The nitration proceeded smoothly under mild condition, fairly clean and in good yields. This readily available and inexpensive system is superior to other methods by avoidance of the use of corrosive nitrating reagents and therefore considered to be convenient in terms of risk reduction, economic advantages and environment protection. The present protocol was convenient and applicable to a variety of aromatic hydrocarbons and could be amenable to high throughput synthesis of combinatorial libraries for potential drug development, which needs to be studied as part of future investigations.