Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201209226
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C H Activation
ACationic High-Valent Cp*CoIII Complex for the Catalytic Generation
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of Nucleophilic Organometallic Species: Directed C H Bond
Activation**
Tatsuhiko Yoshino, Hideya Ikemoto, Shigeki Matsunaga,* and Motomu Kanai*
The nucleophilic addition of organometallic reagents to polar
electrophiles, such as aldehydes, imines, and Michael accept-
tionship of various Cp*CoIII complexes (Scheme 1) for the
catalytic generation of nucleophilic organometallic species.
We found that the [Cp*CoIII(arene)](PF6)2 complex 1a (5–
10 mol%) promoted the addition of 2-aryl pyridines to
imines, enones, and a,b-unsaturated N-acyl pyrroles as ester
and amide surrogates.
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ors, is a fundamental C C bond-forming reaction in organic
synthesis. The generation of nucleophilic organometallic
reagents, however, generally requires stoichiometric amounts
of strong bases and/or reducing metals, such as Mg and Li, and
stoichiometric salt waste is therefore inevitably produced.
Thus, the development of atom-economical processes[1]
involving the catalytic generation of nucleophilic organo-
metallic species and their addition to polar electrophiles
without additional activating reagents is highly desirable.
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Transition-metal-catalyzed C H bond functionalization could
be an attractive method for addressing these issues,[2] but
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addition reactions of C H bonds to polar C X multiple bonds
(X = N, O, or C) have been investigated much less[3] than
related reactions with nonpolar alkenes and alkynes.[2] Quite
recently, it was disclosed that Cp*RhIII complexes (Cp* =
pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)[4] catalyze addition reactions
of arene C H bonds to imines, aldehydes,[6] Michael
[5]
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acceptors,[7] and other polar electrophiles.[8] Although
Cp*RhIII-catalyzed processes are useful and versatile, the
need for expensive and precious rhodium sources is econom-
ically and environmentally disadvantageous. Therefore, stud-
ies are needed for the development of an inexpensive base
metal catalyst as an alternative to the cationic Cp*RhIII
complexes.[9] Herein, we describe the utility of a cationic
high-valent cobalt complex and the structure–activity rela-
Scheme 1. Cationic high-valent cobalt(III) complexes synthesized and
investigated in this study.
We selected cobalt,[10] which is homologous with rhodium
but a more abundant first-row transition metal,[11] and
investigated the ability of high-valent cobalt catalysts to
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promote C H bond functionalization. Optimization studies
[*] T. Yoshino, H. Ikemoto, Dr. S. Matsunaga, Prof. Dr. M. Kanai
Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
The University of Tokyo
with 2-phenylpyridine (2a) and the sulfonyl imine 3a[12–14] as
model substrates are summarized in Table 1. Several com-
mercially available CoII and CoIII salts showed no catalytic
activity at 1008C in 1,2-dichloroethane (Table 1, entries 1 and
3–5). Even the addition of a silver salt to CoCl2 to afford
a cationic Co species resulted in no reaction (Table 1, entry 2).
By analogy with Cp*RhIII catalysis, we expected that the
cyclopentadienyl–cobaltIII structure would be an appropriate
catalyst core for the present reaction. The use of a dimeric
[{Cp*CoCl2}2] complex, however, resulted in no reaction
(Table 1, entry 6). The addition of AgPF6 was effective, and
a cationic Cp*CoIII complex generated in situ afforded 4aa in
48% yield (Table 1, entry 7).
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 (Japan)
E-mail: smatsuna@mol.f.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Prof. Dr. M. Kanai
Japan Science and Technology Agency, ERATO
Kanai Life Science Catalysis Project
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 (Japan)
Dr. S. Matsunaga
Japan Science and Technology Agency, ACT-C
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 (Japan)
[**] This research was supported in part by the ERATO program of JST
(M.K.), a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas
(“Molecular Activation Directed toward Straightforward Synthesis”)
from MEXT (S.M.), the ACT-C program of JST (S.M.), and the Naito
Foundation. T.Y. thanks the JSPS for fellowships. Cp*=penta-
methylcyclopentadienyl.
The results in entries 6 and 7 of Table 1 prompted us to
examine cationic CoIII complexes with thermally labile
ligands. Although the synthesis, structure, and electrochem-
ical properties of some cationic cyclopentadienyl–cobaltIII
complexes with arene ligands have been reported,[15] the
application of these complexes for synthetic organic trans-
formations has not been investigated. Therefore, several
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 2207 –2211
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