Recently considerable attention has been devoted to the generation of arylnitre- nium ions which have been proved to be of great synthetic, mechanistic and biolog- ical interest. 1 ... Like arylnitrenes, arylnitrenium ions can exist in singlet and triplet states 2 ... (2d), and the anilines (lla-g) to an extent very dependent upon the phenyl azide substituent and the nucleophilicity of the aromatic solvent. To a degassed solution of 4-methylphenyl azide (la) (2.5 mmol) in ...