Fully Regiocontrolled Polyarylation of Pyridine

Starting from commercially available 2-chloro-3-hydroxypyridine, a new route leading to the first protypical pentaarylpyridine bearing five different substituents is reported. This strategy involves a set of five sequential but fully regiocontrolled Suzuki–Miyaura reactions and highlights the 2-OBn pyridine protecting group as a key intermediate. The 2-OBn group played a double role: (i) it allowed additional bromination at position 5 and (ii) it could afford the reactive OTf species for the last C-arylation step at the less hindered 2 position of the tetraarylpyridine. The photophysical properties of the novel compounds are also described. The synthesized pentaarylpyridine derivative exhibit a large Stokes shift, strong solvatochromism, and quantum yield values up to 0.47; thus, they constitute promising building blocks for the design of environment-sensitive probes.