Hydrogen-bonding-promoted oxidative addition and regioselective arylation of olefins with aryl chlorides

The first, general, and highly efficient catalytic system that allows a wide range of activated and unactivated aryl chlorides to couple regioselectively with olefins has been developed. The Heck arylation reaction is likely to be controlled by the oxidative addition of ArCl to Pd(0). Hence, an electron-rich diphosphine, 4-MeO-dppp, was introduced to facilitate the catalysis. Solvent choice is critical, however; only sluggish arylation is observed in DMF or DMSO, whereas the reaction proceeds well in ethylene glycol at 0.1-1 mol % catalyst loadings, displaying excellent regioselectivity. Mechanistic evidence supports that the arylation is turnover-limited by the oxidative addition step and, most importantly, that the oxidative addition is accelerated by ethylene glycol, most likely via hydrogen bonding to the chloride at the transition state as shown by DFT calculations. Ethylene glycol thus plays a double role in the arylation, facilitating oxidative addition and promoting the subsequent dissociation of chloride from Pd(II) to give a cationic Pd(II)-olefin species, which is key to the regioselectivity observed.