Trifluoroethanol and liquid-assisted grinding method: a green catalytic access for multicomponent synthesis Trushant Lohar 1 • Ananda Mane 1 • Siddharth Kamat 1 • Arjun Kumbhar 1 • Rajashri Salunkhe 1 Received: 9 August 2017 / Accepted: 17 November 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2017 Abstract An efficient and versatile mechanochemical route for the synthesis of chromene and isoindolo[2,1-a]quinazoline scaffolds has been developed via a simple mortar and pestle liquid-assisted grinding method using 2,2,2-trifluo- roethanol (TFE) as an efficient catalyst. The present protocol is very efficient as it offers reaction in mild reaction condition, cleaner reaction profiles, effortless work- up step with excellent purity, and high yield of the desired products with short reaction time. Keywords Liquid assisted grinding Á Trifluoroethanol Á Chromenes Á Isoindolo[2,1- a]quinazolines Introduction Over the last few years, fluorinated compounds have attracted great interest in organic synthesis due to their favorable properties like low boiling points and high melting points compared with their non-fluorinated counterparts. In addition, they have high polarity and strong hydrogen bond donation which increase their ability to solvate water molecules [1]. Special attention has been paid to 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol (TFE) as its strong electron-withdrawing CF 3 group affects the course of reactions when it is used as a solvent. As TFE is acting as a Brønsted acid, the organic reactions in TFE are generally selective and carried out without using any catalysts. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11164- 017-3206-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Rajashri Salunkhe rsschem1@gmail.com 1 Department of Chemistry, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, M.S. 416004, India 123 Res Chem Intermed https://doi.org/10.1007/s11164-017-3206-y