Angewandte
Communications
Chemie
activity, poor chemo- and regioselectivity, and/or high catalyst
loading.[16] A general problem of such reactions is the
formation of the corresponding ether from the alcohol.
Hence, the methoxycarbonylation in methanol gave methyl
tert-butyl ether instead of the desired esters.[17] Moreover, the
application of sec-alcohols to give linear esters has not been
studied yet.[18]
Based on our continuous interest in transition-metal-
catalyzed reactions with CO, recently we became attracted to
investigate the carbonylation of alcohols in more detail.
Herein we report the first general and efficient protocol for
the carbonylation of various sec- and tert-alcohols to give
linear esters using a specific palladium–phosphine catalyst
system (Scheme 1).
At the beginning of our study, tert-butanol 1a was used as
the model substrate due to its availability and industrial
relevance. As shown in Table 1, the carbonylation was carried
out with the industrially applied palladium catalyst (Pd/L1/
H+, 0.05/0.2/1.5 mol%)[19] under 40 bar pressure of CO at
1208C in MeOH for 20 h. However, only 14% yield of the
desired ester 2a was obtained (Table 1, entry 1). Notably,
substantial formation of palladium black was observed after
the reaction which shows the detrimental effect of in situ
generated water by the dehydration of the alcohol.
Very recently, we introduced the new ligands L2 and L3
for the alkoxycarbonylation of various alkenes.[20] Here, the
additional basic pyridine substituent increases the rate of the
nucleophilic attack on the intermediate palladium acyl
complex. Notably, this last step in the alkoxycarbonylation
cycle is often rate-determining. When the benchmark reaction
was performed in the presence of these two ligands (both
contain a racemic mixture and meso compound), to our
delight the linear ester was obtained in 76% and 61% yields,
respectively (Table 1, entries 2 and 3). Interestingly, this
transformation which requires a strong acid to proceed at
all is significantly improved by the ligand with built-in basic
sites. Other well-known carbonylation ligands L4–7 were also
investigated and very low yield of 2a or no product was
observed under identical reaction conditions (Table 1,
entries 4–7).
To improve the catalyst system further on, several
palladium sources such as PdCl2, Pd(OAc)2, and Pd2(dba)3
were tested in the presence of L2 (Table 1, entries 8–10).
Using Pd0 as the catalyst precursor, the yield of 2a was
increased to 94% suggesting the facile generation of the
crucial palladium hydride species in the catalytic cycle
(Table 1, entry 10). In addition, amounts of PTSA as well as
other types of acids were investigated in the reaction, and 2a
was afforded in moderated to high yields (Table 1, entries 11–
15). Notably, the reaction worked well with only 11.2 ppm
palladium loading and gave the desired ester in high yield
with a turnover number (TON) of 89000 (Table 1, entry 16)!
The high productivity and selectivity indicated that the in situ
formed water was tolerated well with our catalyst systems of
L2.
Table 1: Pd-catalyzed carbonylation of tert-butanol 1a: Investigation of
ligands, Pd precursors, and acids.
Encouraged by these results, we investigated the Pd-
catalyzed carbonylation of sec-alcohols. With cyclohexanol 3a
as a model substrate, the reaction was carried out under
similar conditions to that for tert-alcohols. Unfortunately, less
than 10% yield of the desired product 4a was detected. To
improve the yield, the reaction conditions including acids,
catalyst loading as well as reaction temperature and time were
optimized again and 4a was attained in 82% yield finally (see
Table S1 in the Supporting Information for details).
Next, the carbonylation of both model systems was
compared under similar reaction conditions (Scheme 2). As
shown in Figure 1, almost all of tert-alcohol 1b was converted
within 30 minutes into the corresponding ether 1ba by
Entry
Ligand
Pd source
Acid (x)
Yield [%][b]
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
L1
L2
L3
L4
L5
L6
L7
L2
L2
L2
L2
L2
L2
L2
L2
L2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(acac)2
Pd(OAc)2
PdCl2
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
Pd2(dba)3
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (1.5)
PTSA (0.75)
PTSA (3)
14
76
61
14
0
trace
0
90
86
94
68
92
50
0
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16[c]
CF3SO3H (1.5)
CH3CO2H (1.5)
H2SO4 (0.75)
PTSA (0.625)
62
75
[a] Reaction conditions: 1a (20 mmol), [Pd] (0.05 mol% Pd), L1–L3
(0.2 mol%) or L4–L7 (0.4 mol%), CO (40 bar), MeOH (3 mL), 1208C,
20 h. [b] The yield of 2a was determined by GC analysis using iso-octane
as internal standard. [c] TON=89000, 1a (120 mmol), [Pd2(dba)3]
(0.0005 mmol), L2 (0.1 mmol), PTSA (0.75 mmol), CO (40 bar), MeOH
(16 mL), 1008C, 100 h. PTSA, p-toluenesulfonic acid (monohydrate).
nBuPAd2, di(1-adamantyl)-n-butylphosphine.
Scheme 2. Reaction pathways of the carbonylation of tert- and sec-
alcohols.
2
ꢀ 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 1 – 6
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