Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.132, No.24, 8419-8427, 2010
Palladium-Catalyzed Oxidative Arylhalogenation of Alkenes: Synthetic Scope and Mechanistic Insights
This article describes the development of a Pd-catalyzed reaction for the arylhalogenation (halogen = Cl or Br) of diverse alpha-olefins by oxidatively intercepting Mizoroki-Heck intermediates. These transformations afford synthetically useful 1,2- and 1,1-arylhalogenated products in good yields with good to excellent selectivities that can be modulated by changing the nature of the halogenating reagent and/or the reaction conditions. The selectivity of these reactions can be rationally tuned by (i) controlling the relative rates of oxidative functionalization versus beta-hydride elimination from equilibrating Pd-II-alkyl species and (ii) stabilization of organometallic Pd-II intermediates through the formation of pi-benzyl adducts. These arylhalogenations exhibit modest to excellent levels of stereoselectivity, and the key carbon-halogen bond-forming step proceeds with predominant retention of stereochemistry at carbon.