First ultrasound-mediated one-pot synthesis of N-substituted amides

Ultrasound irradiation, an efficient and innocuous technique of reagent activation for synthesizing organic compounds, has been applied with success to transform seven carboxylic acids to fourteen secondary amides in good to excellent yields. The reaction has worked well either with aryl or alkyl carboxylic acids as well as with aromatic or aliphatic amines. This methodology is expeditious and reliable for preparing secondary carboxamides which in many cases are embedded in the C-5 side-chain of 1,2,4-oxadiazoles (14, 15, 17–27). The elemental analyses of new compounds (19–27) in conjunction with the spectral data of all synthesized amides gave an idea about their structures, while the crystallographic data of one of the compounds (26) supplied information concerning the configurational behavior of the amidic part and also the conformational aspect of the entire molecule in the crystalline state.