Microwave-assisted silver-catalyzed protodecarboxylation and decarboxylative iodination of aromatic carboxylic acids

Carboxylic acids and their derivatives are readily available from both natural and synthetic sources. Apart from being used as direct substrates in the functional transformation, aryl carboxylic acids have found more applications in aromatic functionalization, especially in decarboxylation coupling reactions. Microwave-assisted protodecarboxylation and decarboxylative iodination of aromatic carboxylic acids were achieved with excellent yields in the presence of Ag₂CO₃ catalyst and K₂S₂O₈. These reactions will be helpful for better understanding of decarboxylation-related coupling reactions and also have the potential of being used as a practical labeling method to synthesize regioselective deuterium and iodine-labelled compounds for chemical, biological, and medicinal research.