Light-Enabled Radical 1,4-Aryl Migration Via a Phospho-Smiles Rearrangement

Rearrangement reactions in organic chemistry are attractive strategies to build efficiently complex scaffolds, in just one step, from simple starting materials. Among them, aryl migrations are certainly one of the most useful and straightforward rearrangement for building attractive carbon-carbon bonds. Of note, anionic aryl migration reactions have been largely described compared to their radical counterparts. Recently, visible-light catalysis has proven its efficiency to generate such radical rearrangements due to the concomitant loss of a particle (often CO₂ or SO₂), which is the driving-force of the reaction. Here, we disclose a Smiles-type rearrangement, triggered by a phosphorus-containing unit (arylphosphoramidate), therefore called "phospho-Smiles" rearrangement, allowing a Csp²-Csp² bond formation thanks to a 1,4-aryl migration reaction. In addition, combining this approach with a radical hydroamination/amination reaction produces an amination/phospho-Smiles cascade particularly attractive, for instance, to investigate the synthesis of the phthalazine core, a scarcely described scaffold of interest for medicinal chemistry projects.