In this example question, it says, propose a synthesis to convert benzene to Benzophenone with at least one step being a nitrile reaction. Again, the beautiful thing about synthesis is that there are a lot of different ways to get to our end result. This is going to be yet one way that I can go from a benzene to our desired product. So, we want to go from benzene to Benzophenone, so that would just be benzene connected to a carbonyl connected to another benzene. So all I have to do is try to add this group to my original benzene.

Now here, I'm giving myself the stipulation that it has to be through a nitrile reaction. Right? So let's just do that. We're going to have benzene, and I know that one way to make a nitrile is through going through the nitration reaction first. So we're going to have our nitric acid over sulfuric acid.

That's going to add my NO₂ group to benzene. Next, I can reduce this NO₂ group to NH₂ through tin over HCl. So now it becomes an NH₂. Next, I can change that NH₂ group into a diazonium salt. I do this by using sodium nitrite over HCl.

Once I get my diazonium salt, I can do a Sandmeyer reaction in the form of CuCN. So there goes my nitrile reaction. So I just did the nitrile reaction portion of it. So all I have to do now is change this nitrile into this ketone because it's a ketone. And we know that a nitrile can be changed into a ketone by reacting it with a Grignard reagent followed by hydrolysis.

Alright. So here I would take in my Grignard reagent. Here's my Grignard reagent here. Okay. This bond here would break, hit this carbon, kick this bond here.

And then so that would be step 1. And step 2 would just be H₃O⁺. Alright. So, again, this portion here would be this benzene part. We'd be double-bonded.

We're connecting here this benzene ring, and then H₃O⁺ on the bottom here is just being used so we add an oxygen at the end. So we just created our ketone. Right? So these would be the steps necessary, first, to add our nitrile group to benzene, and then just remember that a nitrile group reacting with Grignard reagent followed by hydrolysis would transform it into a ketone, giving us our final answer.