Simple electrochemical synthesis of cyclic hydroxamic acids by reduction of nitroarenes.

The electrochemical reduction of nitroarenes allows direct access to manifold nitrogen containing heterocycles. This work reports the simple and direct electro-organic synthesis of 18 different examples of 2 H ,4 H -4-hydroxy-1,4-benzoxazin-3-ones in up to 81% yield. The scalability of the method was demonstrated on a gram-scale.