1 Introduction
Owing to their importance for pharmaceutical and material sciences, N-containing
heterocycles have received great attention from the synthetic community [1, 2].
Although numerous methods have been developed for the synthesis of
N-containing heterocycles, novel approaches that allow more diverse synthesis
are still required. In recent years, we have witnessed great progress in metalcatalyzed N-arylation and N-vinylation. These new reactions provide abundant
opportunity for discovering new methodologies to elaborate N-containing
heterocycles. During the past decade, using Pd- and Cu-catalyzed N-arylation
and N-vinylation as the key steps, a number of methods have been developed for
assembling indoles, benzimidazoles, pyrroles, indazoles, indolines, lactams,
quinazolinones, heterobenzazepines and other N-containing heterocycles (for
Pd-catalyzed coupling reaction reviews, see: [3–11]; for Cu-catalyzed coupling
Fig. 1 Typical ligands for Pd-catalyzed N-arylation and N-vinylation
Fig. 2 Typical ligands for Cu-catalyzed N-arylation and N-vinylation
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Y. Jiang and D. Ma