Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201308455
Carbonylation
Hot Paper
Selective Palladium-Catalyzed Aminocarbonylation of Olefins with
Aromatic Amines and Nitroarenes**
Xianjie Fang, Ralf Jackstell, and Matthias Beller*
Molecular-defined catalysts allow for the refinement of
readily available feedstocks to more complex functionalized
products. Prime examples for such transformations are
carbonylation processes, which make use of carbon mon-
oxide—currently the most important C1 building block.[1] In
fact, carbonylations represent industrial core reactions for
converting various bulk chemicals into a diverse set of useful
products for our daily life. More specifically, the transition-
metal-catalyzed addition of carbon monoxide to olefins or
alkynes in the presence of a suitable nucleophile, such as
water, alcohols, and amines, leads to the formation of
saturated or unsaturated carboxylic acid derivatives.[2] Nowa-
days, palladium is one of the most commonly employed
metals in these transformations. Compared with the reaction
of olefins, carbon monoxide, and alcohols (hydroesterifica-
tion) or water (hydrocarboxylation),[3] related aminocarbo-
nylations leading to amides have received much less atten-
tion. The same is also true compared to the well-studied
aminocarbonylation of alkynes,[4] intramolecular aminocar-
bonylation of alkenes,[5] and aminocarbonylation of aryl and
vinyl halides.[6] This is somewhat surprising as the amino-
carbonylation of olefins provides a 100% atom-efficient route
for producing carboxamides, which represent versatile build-
ing blocks and intermediates for the chemical, pharmaceut-
ical, and agrochemical industries.[7]
In early studies of aminocarbonylations, cobalt-carbonyl
complexes[8] or nickel cyanide[9] were used as catalysts. Iron-
carbonyl complexes[10] and ruthenium chloride[11] also showed
some catalytic activity. However, all these reactions were
carried out under very severe conditions (> 2008C;
> 150 atm). Since the 1980s, more effective catalysts, such as
ruthenium-carbonyl complexes[12] and cobalt on charcoal,[13]
have been developed. Nevertheless, the substrate scope was
limited and the reaction conditions were still harsh (1508C;
70 atm). Notably, the formation of the corresponding form-
amide by-products was hardly suppressed. Hence, so far there
exists no general and selective intermolecular aminocarbo-
nylation of different olefins under mild conditions.
Herein, we present an efficient homogeneous palladium-
based catalyst system for the aminocarbonylation of olefins
with a variety of (hetero)aromatic amines or nitro compounds
under relatively mild conditions. Notably, the corresponding
products were obtained in high yield with good regioselec-
tivity, and unwanted formamides were not observed.
In our initial investigations we examined the effect of
a series of phosphine ligands on the model reaction of 1-
octene (1a) with aniline (2a) and carbon monoxide. When
monodentate ligands were used, no conversion or just trace
amounts of the desired products were observed (Table 1,
entries 1–4). Commercially available bidentate ligands (e.g.
BINAP, Dppp, L2, and L4) showed low activity in the
formation of the desired product (Table 1, entries 5–14).
Hence, some of our own developed N-phenylpyrrole-based
bisphosphine ligands[14] with different steric properties were
tested (Table 1, entries 15–17). To our delight, L10 was
identified as the most promising ligand and the reaction
afforded the desired product 3aa with moderate conversion,
albeit with good selectivity. To improve the reaction further,
we evaluated the influence of reaction parameters such as the
molar ratio of 1a to 2a, acid co-catalyst, and solvent in the
presence of L10 as the ligand. As shown in Table 1, the yield
of 3aa was strongly affected by the molar ratio of 1a to 2a as
a consequence of some isomerization of the olefin. Con-
sequently, as the molar ratio of 1a to 2a increased to 2:1, the
yield of 3aa increased to 86% (Table 1, entry 18). Moreover,
no reaction occurred in the absence of para-toluenesulfonic
acid monohydrate (p-TsOH), thus indicating the importance
of the acid for the generation of the catalytically active
palladium hydride species (Table 1, entry 19).[15] Interestingly,
changing the THF solvent to toluene resulted in full
conversion of 2a and gave nearly quantitative yields of the
corresponding amides, as determined by GC (Table 1,
entry 20). No conversion was observed and the starting
materials were recovered in the absence of [Pd(acac)2]
(acac = acetylacetonate) or when using other catalysts such
as [Rh(CO)2(acac)], [Co2(CO)8], [Ir(cod)(acac)] (cod = 1,5-
cyclooctadiene), [Ru3(CO)12], [Fe3(CO)12], and [Ni(acac)2]
(Table 1, entry 21).
[*] X. Fang, Dr. R. Jackstell, Prof. Dr. M. Beller
Leibniz-Institut fꢀr Katalyse e. V. an der Universitꢁt Rostock
Albert-Einstein-Strasse 29a, 18059 Rostock (Germany)
E-mail: matthias.beller@catalysis.de
With the optimized reaction conditions established
(Table 1, entry 20), we examined the scope and limitations
of this aminocarbonylation process with respect to various
olefins (Table 2). Both short- and long-chain terminal olefins
1a–1e provided the corresponding amides in good to
excellent yields and with good regioselectivities (Table 2,
entries 1–4). The more challenging internal olefin 1e was
transformed to C9-amides in 53% yield. The linear amide is
still formed preferentially because of isomerization of the
olefin (66:34 n/i selectivity; Table 2, entry 5). Lower linear
[**] This research was funded by Evonik Industries, Advanced Inter-
mediates, Performance Intermediates, and the Deutsche For-
schungsgemeinschaft (Leibniz Prize to M.B.). We thank Dr. C.
Fischer, S. Buchholz, and S. Schareina for their excellent technical
and analytical support.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 14089 –14093
ꢀ 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
14089