The iron-catalysed Suzuki coupling of aryl chlorides

Rowsell, Benjamin J. S., O'Brien, Harry M., Athavan, Gayathri, Daley-Dee, Patrick R., Krieger, Johannes, Richards, Emma ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6691-2377, Heaton, Karl, Fairlamb, Ian J. S. and Bedford, Robin B. 2024. The iron-catalysed Suzuki coupling of aryl chlorides. Nature Catalysis 7 , pp. 1186-1198. 10.1038/s41929-024-01234-0

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Abstract

The very widely exploited Suzuki biaryl coupling reaction typically requires catalysts based on palladium, but there is an increasing desire to replace this metal with a more sustainable, less expensive alternative, with catalysts based on iron being a particularly attractive target. Here we show that a simple iron-based catalyst with an N-heterocyclic carbene ligand can be used to excellent effect in the Suzuki biaryl coupling of aryl chloride substrates with aryl boronic esters activated by an organolithium reagent. Mechanistic studies suggest the possible involvement of Fe(I) as the lowest oxidation state on the catalytic manifold and show that the challenging step is not activation of the aryl chloride substrate, but rather the transmetallation step. These findings are likely to lead to a renaissance of iron-catalysed carbon–carbon bond-forming transformations with soft nucleophilic coupling partners.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Chemistry
Publisher:	Nature Research
ISSN:	2520-1158
Funders:	EPSRC UK Catalysis Hub
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	17 October 2024
Date of Acceptance:	12 September 2024
Last Modified:	10 Dec 2024 13:42
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/173066

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