The world is in a severe need for more environmentally friendly catalytic reactions. The Heck reaction is one of the most important and well-known catalytic cycles and is typically completed by precious metal catalysts. While there is much research being done on first row transition metal Heck coupling, there is little to no precedent for iron catalyzed Heck coupling of any kind. We report a simple iron catalyzed Heck coupling of benzylic chlorides with aryl olefins using Na[Fe(CO)2(?5-C5H5)]. This iron catalyst has orthogonal selectivity to classical Pd catalysts, allowing benzyl chlorides to be activated selectively in the presence of aryl chlorides.

Iron catalyzed benzylic Heck coupling: A green approach to transition metal catalysis

248th National Meeting (2014)

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