Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

General cross-coupling reactions with adaptive dynamic homogeneous catalysis

Abstract

Cross-coupling reactions are among the most important transformations in modern organic synthesis1,2,3. Although the range of reported (het)aryl halides and nucleophile coupling partners is very large considering various protocols, the reaction conditions vary considerably between compound classes, necessitating renewed case-by-case optimization of the reaction conditions4. Here we introduce adaptive dynamic homogeneous catalysis (AD-HoC) with nickel under visible-light-driven redox reaction conditions for general C(sp2)–(hetero)atom coupling reactions. The self-adjustive nature of the catalytic system allowed the simple classification of dozens of various classes of nucleophiles in cross-coupling reactions. This is synthetically demonstrated in nine different bond-forming reactions (in this case, C(sp2)–S, Se, N, P, B, O, C(sp3, sp2, sp), Si, Cl) with hundreds of synthetic examples under predictable reaction conditions. The catalytic reaction centre(s) and conditions differ from one another by the added nucleophile, or if required, a commercially available inexpensive amine base.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: General classification of frequently used nucleophiles (according to the required additive) for cross-coupling reactions with AD-HoC using nickel under visible-light-driven redox reaction conditions.
Fig. 2: The nucleophile scope in C(sp2)–Br cross-coupling reactions.
Fig. 3: Installation of valuable functional groups onto (het)arenes using either simple nucleophiles or anions as practical surrogates.
Fig. 4: Functionalization of bio-relevant molecules either as nucleophiles or electrophiles, synthesis of drugs, drug and pesticide intermediates, and examples of two-step (either sequential or one pot) synthetic transformations.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information and upon request from the corresponding authors.

References

  1. Miyaura, N. & Suzuki, A. Palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions of organoboron compounds. Chem. Rev. 95, 2457–2483 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Ruiz-Castillo, P. & Buchwald, S. L. Applications of palladium-catalyzed C–N cross-coupling reactions. Chem. Rev. 116, 12564–12649 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  3. Ley, S. V. & Thomas, A. W. Modern synthetic methods for copper-mediated C(aryl)–O, C(aryl)–N, and C(aryl)–S bond formation. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 42, 5400–5449 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Dorel, R., Grugel, C. P. & Haydl, A. M. The Buchwald–Hartwig amination after 25 years. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 17118–17129 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Diccianni, J. B. & Diao, T. N. Mechanisms of nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions. Trends Chem. 1, 830–844 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Jana, R., Pathak, T. P. & Sigman, M. S. Advances in transition metal (Pd,Ni,Fe)-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions using alkyl-organometallics as reaction partners. Chem. Rev. 111, 1417–1492 (2011).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  7. Zhang, J., Wang, S. Y., Zhang, Y. & Feng, Z. Iron-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions for the construction of carbon–heteroatom bonds. Asian J. Org. Chem. 9, 1519–1531 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Shaw, M. H., Twilton, J. & MacMillan, D. W. C. Photoredox catalysis in organic chemistry. J. Org. Chem. 81, 6898–6926 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Tellis, J. C., Primer, D. N. & Molander, G. A. Single-electron transmetalation in organoboron cross-coupling by photoredox/nickel dual catalysis. Science 345, 433–436 (2014).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Oderinde, M. S., Frenette, M., Robbins, D. W., Aquila, B. & Johannes, J. W. Photoredox mediated nickel catalyzed cross-coupling of thiols with aryl and heteroaryl iodides via thiyl radicals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 138, 1760–1763 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Qin, Y. Z., Sun, R., Gianoulis, N. P. & Nocera, D. G. Photoredox nickel-catalyzed C–S cross-coupling: mechanism, kinetics, and generalization. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 143, 2005–2015 (2021).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Escobar, R. A. & Johannes, J. W. A unified and practical method for carbon–heteroatom cross-coupling using nickel/photo dual catalysis. Chem. Eur. J. 26, 5168–5173 (2020).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Kullmer, C. N. P. et al. Accelerating reaction generality and mechanistic insight through additive mapping. Science 376, 532–539 (2022).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Ahneman, D. T., Estrada, J. G., Lin, S. S., Dreher, S. D. & Doyle, A. G. Predicting reaction performance in C–N cross-coupling using machine learning. Science 360, 186–190 (2018).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Itoh, T. & Mase, T. Practical thiol surrogates and protective groups for arylthiols for Suzuki–Miyaura conditions. J. Org. Chem. 71, 2203–2206 (2006).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Wolfe, J. P., Ahman, J., Sadighi, J. P., Singer, R. A. & Buchwald, S. L. An ammonia equivalent for the palladium-catalyzed amination of aryl halides and triflates. Tetrahedron Lett. 38, 6367–6370 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Ghosh, A. K. & Brindisi, M. Organic carbamates in drug design and medicinal chemistry. J. Med. Chem. 58, 2895–2940 (2015).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. Nakamura, Y., Maruya, K.-i. & Mizoroki, T. A study of the ligand-exchange of bromo(o-tolyl)bis(triphenylphosphine)nickel(II) with amine by means of 31P- spectroscopy and 13C-NMR spectroscopy. Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn 53, 3089–3092 (1980).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Noel, T. et al. Palladium-catalyzed amination reactions in flow: overcoming the challenges of clogging via acoustic irradiation. Chem. Sci. 2, 287–290 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Sun, R., Qin, Y. Z. & Nocera, D. G. General paradigm in photoredox nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling allows for light-free access to reactivity. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59, 9527–9533 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Till, N. A., Tian, L., Dong, Z., Scholes, G. D. & MacMillan, D. W. C. Mechanistic analysis of metallaphotoredox C–N coupling: photocatalysis initiates and perpetuates Ni(I)/Ni(III) coupling activity. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 15830–15841 (2020).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Holland, P. L., Andersen, R. A. & Bergman, R. G. Application of the E–C approach to understanding the bond energies thermodynamics of late-metal amido, aryloxo and alkoxo complexes: an alternative to / repulsion. Comments Inorg. Chem. 21, 115–129 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Vitaku, E., Smith, D. T. & Njardarson, J. T. Analysis of the structural diversity, substitution patterns, and frequency of nitrogen heterocycles among US FDA approved pharmaceuticals. J. Med. Chem. 57, 10257–10274 (2014).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Lavagnino, M. N., Liang, T. & MacMillan, D. W. C. HARC as an open-shell strategy to bypass oxidative addition in Ullmann–Goldberg couplings. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 21058–21064 (2020).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  25. Vinogradova, E. V., Park, N. H., Fors, B. P. & Buchwald, S. L. Palladium-catalyzed synthesis of N-aryl carbamates. Org. Lett. 15, 1394–1397 (2013).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I.G. thanks R. Mandal for encouragement for this project. We thank R. Hoheisel for the CV measurements and A. N. Fakhrutdinov for NMR spectra checking. This project received funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (TRR 325 – 444632635) and the Russian Science Foundation (RSF projects 21-13-00193, 22-13-00247). N.S. thanks Bayhost for a PhD stipend. T.A.K. thanks the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) for a PhD scholarship. J.D. gratefully acknowledges Elitenetzwerk Bayern ‘IDK Chemical Catalysis with photonic or electric energy input’ for financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

I.G. and B.K. conceived the project. I.G. designed experiments with valuable and critical inputs from N.S. and B.K. I.G., N.S., T.A.K., J.D. and M.N. performed experiments and analysed the results. J.V.B. performed mass spectrometric experiments. J.V.B., N.S. and V.P.A. analysed the mass spectrometry results. V.P.A. contributed to the mechanistic concept description. I.G. and B.K. prepared the paper with input from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Indrajit Ghosh or Burkhard König.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Additional electrophiles and nucleophiles scope in C(sp2)–Br cross–coupling reactions.

Isolated yields are reported unless noted otherwise. aFor an all-inclusive-examples figure see section 4 in the Supplementary Information. bThe compounds were isolated as their respective oxides.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Additional examples of cross–coupling reactions with amino acids and drugs as nucleophiles and drugs as electrophiles.

Isolated yields are reported unless noted otherwise. aFor an all-inclusive-examples figure see section 4 in the Supplementary Information.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Additional examples of cross–coupling reactions for the synthesis of drug and pesticide intermediates (electrophile and nucleophile scopes are demonstrated).

Isolated yields are reported unless noted otherwise. aFor an all-inclusive-examples figure see section 4 in the Supplementary Information.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Additional examples of cross–coupling reactions for two-step transformations– either in tandem or one-pot.

Isolated yields are reported unless noted otherwise. For compound 270, the formation of the desired product was confirmed by GC and GC–MS analysis with an authentic sample, and no attempts were made for the purification of the desired product. The synthesis of 277 can directly be performed with 4CzIPN. aFor an all-inclusive-examples figure see section 4 in the Supplementary Information.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ghosh, I., Shlapakov, N., Karl, T.A. et al. General cross-coupling reactions with adaptive dynamic homogeneous catalysis. Nature 619, 87–93 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06087-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06087-4

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing