DOI: 10.1002/chem.201000723
Remarkably Effective Phosphanes Simply with a PPh2 Moiety:
Application to Pd-Catalysed Cross-Coupling Reactions for
Tetra-ortho-substituted Biaryl Syntheses
Chau Ming So, Wing Kin Chow, Pui Ying Choy, Chak Po Lau, and Fuk Yee Kwong*[a]
Dedicated to Professor Albert S. C. Chan on the occasion of his 60th birthday
ortho-Substituted biaryl compounds are important struc-
tural motifs present in a number of natural products from
various origins and have a wide range of biological proper-
ties.[1,2] The biaryl substructures in vancomycin, a glycopep-
tide antibiotic from Streptomyces orientalis,[3] steganacin, a
cytotoxic tubulin-binding dibenzocyclootadiene lignan from
Steganotaenia araliacea,[4] and michellamine B, an anti-HIV
naphthylisoquinoline alkaloid from Ancistrocladus abbrevia-
tus,[5] have aroused the interest of many synthetic chemists
within the field of sterically congested biaryl synthesis.
However, the ability to prepare extremely hindered asym-
metric biaryl compounds by using Suzuki–Miyaura coupling
reactions has proven to be an extremely difficult task.
Recent superb findings by the Buchwald group have demon-
strated that PCy2-substituted phenanthrene-based phos-
phanes[6] and 2-dicyclohexylphosphino-2’,6’-dimethoxybi-
phenyl (S-Phos)[7] are effective ligands for the synthesis of
tetra-ortho-substituted biaryl compounds, mainly from aryl
bromides (Figure 1). To date, in the exploration of phos-
phane ligands, only the ruthenocenylphosphane R-Phos de-
veloped by Hoshi/Hagiwara[8] and, very recently, the diaza-
phospholidine chloride disclosed by Ackermann[9] allowed
the successful synthesis of tetra-ortho-substituted biaryls
from unactivated aryl chlorides (Figure 1). Besides phos-
phanes, carbene IBiox12·OTf with a tuneable ring size,
“flexible-steric-bulk” PEPPSI-IPent and phenanthryl-based
H2-ICP·HCl, reported by Glorius,[10] Organ[11] and Ma/
Andrus,[12] respectively, are also appropriate for sterically
congested couplings (Figure 1).
The lore in the field of demanding cross-coupling reac-
tions reveals that successful phosphane ligands often contain
dialkylphosphane groups, such as PCy2 or PtBu2 (Figure 1).
In contrast to ArPCy2 and ArPtBu2 ligands, the correspond-
ing ArPPh2 compounds have received less attention due to
the accepted rationale indicating that they are less electron-
rich and less bulky than the corresponding ArPCy2 and
ArPtBu2 compounds (Figure 2)[13] and, thus, provide a less
favourable outcomes for the oxidative addition and reduc-
tive elimination steps in unactivated aryl chloride cou-
plings.[14–16]
[a] C. M. So, W. K. Chow, P. Y. Choy, Prof. Dr. C. P. Lau,
Prof. Dr. F. Y. Kwong
However, triarylphosphanes are attractive compounds as
they are reasonably air stable and can be readily prepared
from the relatively inexpensive Ph2PCl.[17] Herein, we report
an unexpected finding that advances coupling technology by
showing that the previously omitted triarylphosphane family
can effectively deal with difficult coupling reactions. We dis-
close their ability to perform the most difficult biaryl cou-
State Key Laboratory of Chiroscience and
Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong (Hong Kong)
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Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
7996
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Chem. Eur. J. 2010, 16, 7996 – 8001