A clean and dry 500 ml round bottom flask equipped with a reflux condenser, magnetic stir bar, and thermometer with adapter was prepared and purged with nitrogen Anhydrous toluene (250.0 ml) was transferred to this flask by cannula. 2-(3-bromophenyl)-1,3-dioxolane (6.0 ml, 0.0397 mol) was added by syringe followed by the manual addition of 1-naphthylamine (5.08 g, 0.0355 mol). The reaction solution was purged with a strong nitrogen flow for 30 minutes. Sodium tert-butoxide (5.60 g, 0.0583 mol) and Pd2dba3 (0.65 g, 0.0007 mol) were then added manually, followed by the addition of tri-tert-butylphosphine (1.30 g, 0.0064 mol) in toluene (˜10 ml) via syringe. The vessel was heated to reflux for approximately 5 hours. The reaction was then cooled to room temperature and filtered through a Celite and silica gel pad washing thoroughly with acetone and chloroform. Solvent was removed by rotary evaporation. The crude material was purified by flash column chromatography using ethyl acetate/hexane as an eluent. This provided pure product confirmed by NMR spectroscopy.
