Our preliminary exploration started with 4-toluidine (
1a) as a template substrate. Treatment of
1a, NaSCN (2 equiv.), and HOAc (2 equiv.) in bis(methoxypropy)ether (BME, 1 mL) under ambient air by the irradiation of a 6 W blue LED lamp led to the production of the expected 6-methylbenzo[d]thiazol-2-amine (
2a) in 25% NMR yield (
Table 1, entry 1). Next, the screening of thiocyanate salts (entries 1–3) revealed that the KSCN was the optimal thiocyanation source (entry 2). A series of natural acids (entries 4–8), include glycolic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, oxalic acid and citric acid were subjected to investigation, and malic acid (entry 6) was found to be the best choice for this present reaction. An optimization of the solvents (entries 9–14) illustrated that none of the other solvents was superior to BME. Finally, the impact of varying the concentration of
1a, the amount of KSCN and malic acid were investigated. Decreasing the concentration of
1a resulted in no improvement in the reaction efficiency (entry 15), whereas a slightly lower yield of
2a was observed when the concentration of
1a was increased to 0.4 mmol/mL (entry 16). Altering the amount of KSCN did not improve the yield of
2a (entries 17 and 18). Increasing the loading of malic acid to 3 equiv. did not provide any significant changes in reaction outcome (entry 19). Reducing the amount of malic acid to 1 equiv. was feasible; however, further decreasing to 0.8 equiv. resulted in a lower yield (entries 20 and 21). No conversion of 4-toluidine was observed in the absence of a Brønsted acid (entry 22). No improvement in the photocatalytic reaction was detected when pure oxygen gas was used instead of ambient air (entry 23). When the reaction was conducted under nitrogen atmosphere, no reaction occurred (entry 24). Only a trace amount of
2a was formed while using 6 W green LED lamp as the light source (entry 25). Conducting the reaction under the radiation of sunlight led to much lower reaction efficiency (entry 26). The present transformation did not proceed under the dark condition, indicating that this present reaction involves a visiblelight-induced mechanism (entry 27).