.
Angewandte
Communications
Hydroarylation
Branch-Selective Alkene Hydroarylation by Cooperative
Destabilization: Iridium-Catalyzed ortho-Alkylation of Acetanilides
Giacomo E. M. Crisenza, Olga O. Sokolova, and John F. Bower*
Abstract: An iridium(I) catalyst system, modified with the
wide-bite-angle and electron-deficient bisphosphine dFppb
(1,4-bis(di(pentafluorophenyl)phosphino)butane) promotes
highly branch-selective hydroarylation reactions between
diverse acetanilides and aryl- or alkyl-substituted alkenes.
This provides direct and ortho-selective access to synthetically
challenging anilines, and addresses long-standing issues asso-
ciated with related Friedel–Crafts alkylations.
A
nilines are privileged building blocks for medicinal
chemistry and materials science,[1] and many methods have
been developed to access substituted derivatives.[2–7] How-
ever, a long-standing deficiency resides in the lack of general
procedures for the ortho-selective introduction of branched
alkyl substituents. Palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings of
secondary alkyl organometallics are not well suited to this
task, partially because of competitive isomerization after
transmetalation, which can lead to linear adducts.[8] ortho-
Selective Friedel–Crafts reactions are an appealing approach,
which, in practice, is effective only in certain simple cases.[9]
Well established problems associated with controlling the site
and extent of alkylation usually predominate, and competitive
coordination of the acid catalyst to the aniline nitrogen atom
means that, where feasible, harsh reaction conditions are
required.[9] Consequently, a method that addresses these
issues by providing direct and mild access to ortho-branched
anilines is likely to have widespread application.
Scheme 1. Branch-selective hydroarylation by “cooperative destabiliza-
tion” and outline of this work. BARF=tetrakis(3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)-
phenyl)borate, cod=1,5-cyclooctadiene, dFppb=1,4-bis(di(penta-
fluorophenyl)phosphino)butane.
Recently, we reported a method that overturns the linear
selectivity of Murai-type hydroarylations[10,11] to provide
access to branched adducts 1b (Scheme 1a).[12,13] All steps
up to iridium(III)–alkyl intermediates 3a and 3b are fast and
reversible, with linear adduct 3a likely favored on steric
grounds. Our “cooperative destabilization” strategy employs
a novel bisphosphine, dFppb, with a wide bite angle to
increase bond angle y and compress angles xa/xb, thereby
enhancing steric destabilization of 3a/3b.[12] Destabilization is
most acute for 3b, as this has a bulkier secondary alkyl ligand,
and consequently, reductive elimination by path b is amplified
to provide branched products 1b at the expense of linear
isomers 1a.[14] This process employs weakly coordinating
carbonyl directing groups, and tolerates both aryl- and alkyl-
substituted alkenes. Related branch-selective hydroarylation
methods invariably require strongly coordinating N-based
directing groups and are limited to styrenes[15a–d] or, more
recently, enol ethers as the olefinic partner.[15e,16,17] In this
report, we extend our strategy to the branch-selective ortho-
alkylation of acetanilides (Scheme 1b).[18] Significantly, this
work expands our approach to encompass a) electron-rich
arenes, and b) inherently more demanding six-ring metalla-
cycles (2 vs. 4). Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, this
study outlines the first intermolecular branch-selective
Murai-type alkene hydroarylations that proceed via six-ring
chelates. In combination with earlier work,[12] these results
suggest that a unified approach to branch-selective alkene
hydroarylation is achievable and underpin ongoing efforts
towards enantioselective variants.
[*] G. E. M. Crisenza, O. O. Sokolova, Dr. J. F. Bower
School of Chemistry, University of Bristol
Bristol, BS8 1TS (United Kingdom)
E-mail: john.bower@bris.ac.uk
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
ꢀ 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co.
KGaA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Preliminary studies involved exposing acetanilide 5a and
styrene to an IrI system derived from [Ir(cod)2]BARF and
dFppb (Table 1). At 1208C in dioxane, adduct 6a was formed
14866
ꢀ 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 14866 –14870