Iridium-Catalyzed Direct C-H Amidation Producing Multicolor Fluorescent Molecules Emitting Blue-to-Red Light and White Light.

We report a powerful strategy, iridium-catalyzed direct C-H amidation (DCA) for synthesizing various fluorescent sulfonamides that emit light over the entire visible spectrum with excellent efficiency (up to 99% yields). By controlling electronic characters of the resulting sulfonamides, a wide range of blue-to-red emissions was predictably obtained via an excited-state intramolecular proton-transfer process. Furthermore, we even succeeded in a white-light generation, highlighting that this DCA is an excellent synthetic method to prepare a library of fluorophores.