Full Paper
shown that using water as additive in Pd-catalyzed cross-cou-
pling with N-tosylhydrazone could significant improve the
yield.[18] Indeed, the yield could be further improved to 91% in
the presence of 5.0 equiv. H2O (Table 1, entry 10). To enhance
the solubility of the sulfonylhydrazone salt, 2.0 equiv benzyl
triethylammonium chloride (BTAC) was used as an additive,
but this was found to be ineffective (data not shown). The use
of 1.5 equiv of NEt3 as co-base did not improve the yield (data
not shown). No reaction occurred when [HPtBu3]BF4, Xphos, or
Phen was used as the ligand, and a lower yield was obtained
when the reaction was performed with tri(furan-2-yl)phosphine
(TFP) (Table 1, entries 11–14). Employing dppb as the ligand
gave moderate yields (Table 1, entry 15). For the palladium cat-
alysts, various PdII and Pd0 were investigated, however, they
were less efficient than Pd(OAc)2 (Table 1, entries 16–20). Final-
ly, a control experiment showed that the reaction did not pro-
ceed without palladium catalyst (Table 1, entry 21).
Table 3. Intermolecular benzylation/carbene migratory insertion reaction:
scope of the reaction with benzyl chloride 2.[a]
[a] Reaction conditions: 1a (0.3 mmol, 1.0 equiv),
2
(0.75 mmol,
With the optimized reaction conditions established, the
scope of this reaction was explored with a range of N-tosylhy-
drazones 3; the results are summarized in Table 2. It was found
2.5 equiv), 3a (0.6 mmol, 2.0 equiv), Pd(OAc)2 (10 mol%), PPh3 (20 mol%),
norbornene (0.90 mmol, 3.0 equiv), H2O (1.5 mmol, 5.0 equiv), Cs2CO3
(1.35 mmol, 4.5 equiv), dioxane (3 mL), 908C, 15 h under Ar. Yield of iso-
lated product.
Table 2. Intermolecular benzylation/carbene migratory insertion reaction;
scope of the reaction with N-tosylhydrazone 3.[a]
corresponding products were obtained in moderate to good
yields. Both electron-withdrawing and electron-releasing
groups on the aromatic ring were tolerated. The position of
the substituent also did not noticeably affect the cross-cou-
pling.
Finally, we tested the scope of the reaction with respect to
aryl iodides under the standard conditions as shown in Table 2
and Table 3. Both electron-rich and electron-poor aryl iodides
afforded the expected products 4 in moderate to good yields.
Highly sterically hindered 1-iodo-2-isopropylbenzene success-
fully afforded the product 4-27 in 72% yield. 1-Iodonaphtha-
lene was also suitable for the reactions. According to previous
reports, aryl iodides containing a substituent ortho to the CÀH
activation site are less reactive, which may be due to steric hin-
drance during the palladation of the CÀH bond.[9a,d,e] To our
delight, the reaction proceeded efficiently and afforded the
product in good yields (Table 4, 4-31, 4-32, and 4-33).
The success of ortho-substituted aryl iodide in the CÀH acti-
vation/carbene migratory insertion encouraged us to extend
this methodology to prepare dibenzylated products by
a double CÀH activation of two ortho positions of aryl iodide.
Indeed, dibenzylated products were obtained in moderate
yields when aryl iodide was subjected to slightly modified
standard reaction conditions. The reactions with meta- and
para-substituted benzyl chloride all worked efficiently (Table 5,
4-35, 4-36, 4-37, 4-38, 4-39, and 4-40). For the aryl iodide,
electronic effects of the substituent had a notable effect on
the yield. Better results were obtained when the aryl iodide
was substituted with an electron-rich group (Table 5, 4-41 and
4-42). A diminished yield was observed when the ring was
substituted with an electron-poor group (Table 5, 4-45). The
structure of 4-38 was confirmed by X-ray crystallographic anal-
ysis.[19]
[a] Reaction conditions: 1a (0.3 mmol, 1.0 equiv),
2
(0.75 mmol,
2.5 equiv), 3 (0.6 mmol, 2.0 equiv), Pd(OAc)2 (10 mol%), PPh3 (20 mol%),
norbornene (0.90 mmol, 3.0 equiv), H2O (1.5 mmol, 5.0 equiv), Cs2CO3
(1.35 mmol, 4.5 equiv), dioxane (3 mL), 908C, 15 h under Ar. Yield of iso-
lated product.
that N-tosylhydrazones with electron-donating or electron-
withdrawing groups on the aromatic ring worked smoothly to
afford the desired product 4 in moderate to good yields. Nota-
bly, the NO2 group was compatible with the reaction (Table 2,
4-12). Additionally, ortho-substituted substrates also proceeded
efficiently (Table 2, 4-13, 4-14, and 4-15). It is worth noting
that chloro- and bromo-substituents were tolerated under the
Pd-catalyzed conditions, which allows further metal-catalyzed
coupling reactions (Table 2, 4-5, 4-6, 4-10, and 4-11).
Next, a series of substituted benzyl chlorides were subjected
to the optimized reaction conditions (Table 3). In all cases, the
Alkyl iodide was employed as the alkylating agent to further
demonstrate the generality of this reaction. Various alkyl io-
Chem. Eur. J. 2014, 20, 1 – 8
3
ꢀ 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
&
&
These are not the final page numbers! ÞÞ