One-pot efficient reductive acetylation of aromatic nitro compounds

An efficient one-pot reductive acetylation of aromatic nitro compounds is developed without isolating the intermediate amine. The nitro compound is efficiently reduced by sodium borohydride and catalytic amount of Pd-C in MeOH-water media in presence / absence of alkali, and the amine thus generated is acetylated by acetic anhydride in situ in excellent yields through easy work-up. The technique unveils a new route for direct conversion of synthetically accessible nitro compounds to acetamido functionality and is reproducible in large scale. The method has been successfully extended in case of nitrosophenols as well.