Synthesis and structural characterization of palladium pincer complexes: Sustainable synthesis of benzothiazoles

An efficient Pd(II)N^N^S pincer type catalysts‐promoted sustainable construction of pharmaceutically important benzothiazole derivatives from primary alcohols and 2‐aminothiophenol via acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling (ADC) method has been described. The newly synthesized ligand L 2 and the Pd(II) complexes in addition to L 1 and L 3 were characterized by analytical and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR), UV–visible (UV–vis), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectral techniques. Further, the ORTEP views of the complexes 2 and 3 were established by a single crystal XRD study, which evidenced the coordination of the thiosemicarbazone ligands and disclose the square‐planar geometry around the Pd(II) ion. The present homogeneous catalytic system involves synthesizing a range of benzothiazoles via C−S and C−N bond formation with excellent yields up to 93%. The described methodology employs a sustainable, highly abundant, and inexpensive alcohol as starting material using 1 mol% catalyst loading, and water and hydrogen gas are the only by‐products. Furthermore, a plausible mechanism involving in situ aldehyde formation via dehydrogenation of primary alcohols has been proposed. A large‐scale synthesis of 2‐(4‐methoxyphenyl)benzo[d]thiazole illustrates the synthetic utility of the present catalytic protocol.