A one-pot procedure for trifluoroacetylation of arylamines using trifluoroacetic acid as a trifluoroacetylating reagent

A convenient procedure for the preparation of aryl trifluoroacetamides from aryl amines is described that employs 2–4 M equiv of trifluoroacetic acid in refluxing xylene as a trifluoroacetylating agent. Addition of an amount of pyridine that is equimolar to the amount of trifluoroacetic acid present in the reaction mixture facilitates the trifluoroacetylation of rather basic arylamines.