| Abstract: | A practical synthetic method for polysubstituted imidazoles via iodine‐catalyzed aerobic oxidative cyclization of aryl ketones and benzylamines has been developed. It was found to tolerate a broad range of substrates to prepare polysubstituted imidazole derivatives in a one‐pot manner, and thus importantly allowed product diversity for imidazole chemistry. Additionally, the resultant 1,2,4‐trisubstituted imidazoles could be conveniently transformed to functionalized 1,2,4,5‐tetrasubstituted imidazoles via electrophilic substitution or direct C H functionalization, or 2,4‐diaryl‐1H‐imidazoles by debenzylation reaction, which further indicates potential applications of this method in synthetic and pharmaceutical chemistry. |
