2-Hydroxy-pyridines (or commonly named 2-pyridones) are widespread nitrogen heterocycles in natural and synthetic products and their applications in biological, pharmaceutical and agrochemical compounds are becoming increasingly important. Therefore, several procedures have been described in the literature for the preparation of this heterocyclic framework. Among them, multicomponent reactions are current in synthetic organic chemistry where reducing reaction times, high yields and ease of product isolation are the main benefits of this method.

In order to study the effect of the aforementioned method under greener medium, we herein describe a novel one-pot route for the design of 4,6-diaryl-3-cyano-2-pyridone derivatives under free solvent conditions. The three-component condensation of alkenes, ketones and ammonium acetate afforded efficiently the target heterocycles with higher yields in short time reaction comparing to a classical method.