To highlight the potential utility of these novel reagents, we attempted to investigate their intrinsic reactivity in organic synthesis. We treated 3-methylbenzo[
b]thiophene
3a and 1.0 equiv. of carbazole-containing hypervalent iodine reagent
2c as the model substrates, and the reaction was performed in the presence of 10 mol% CuCl as a catalyst, with dry acetonitrile as solvent at 80 ℃ for 24 h. The desired C—N coupling product
4ac could be obtained in 18% yield (determined by NMR analysis), meanwhile, N—N coupling bicarbazole by-product
5 could be obtained in 52% yield (
Table 1, entry 1), presumably via the dimerization of carbazole radical
A. Subsequently, the effects of other copper catalysts were examined for the reaction. CuBr or CuTc was found to give bicarbazole product
5 beyond 65% yield and no product
4ac was detected (
Table 1, entries 2 and 3). Surprisingly, using Cu(OTf)
2 or (CuOTf)
2C
6H
6 as the catalyst,
4ac was obtained in good yields with trace amount of byproduct 5 (
Table 1, entries 4 and 5). And when Cu(CH
3CN)
4PF
6 was used (
Table 1, entry 6), product
4ac was formed in a higher yield of 63%(isolated in 58%). Then, a solvent screening showed that switching the solvent from CH
3CN to DCM, DCE, THF or DMSO resulted in lower yield of product
4ac (
Table 1, entries 7–10). Additionally, the change of the reaction temperature could not improve the yield of
4ac (
Table 1, entries 11 and 12). In particular, the reaction only afforded byproduct
5 in absence of the copper catalyst (
Table 1, entry 13).