Bisphosphine pathway

Recent development of the Heck reaction has also led to greater understanding of its mechanistic details. The general outlines of the mechanism of the Heck reaction have been appreciated since the 1970s and are discussed in numerous reviews [2,3]. More recently, two distinct pathways, termed the neutral and cationic pathways, have been recognized [2c-g,3,7,8,9]. The neutral pathway is followed for unsaturated halide substrates and is outlined in Scheme 8G. 1 for the Heck cyclization of an aryl halide. Thus, oxidative addition of the aryl halide 1.2 to a (bisphosphine)Pd(O) (1.1) catalyst generates intermediate 1.3. Coordination of... 

A key feature of the cationic mechanism is that removal (or dissociation) of an anionic ligand from the palladium coordination sphere allows alkene complexation to occur while maintaining coordination of both phosphines of a bisphosphine ligand. That both phosphines can be accommodated in a square-planar four-coordinate intermediate during the insertion step has provided a simple rationalization for the higher enantioselectivities often observed for the cationic pathway. Concrete information on the enantioselective step of asymmetric Heck reactions proceeding by the cationic pathway has not been reported to date. It is likely to be either coordination of the alkene to generate 20.S or the insertion step (20.5 —> 20.6, Scheme 8G.20). 

The neutral pathway differs from the cationic pathway in the absence of a vacant coordination site in the square-planar four-coordinate palladium(II) intermediate prior to alkene coordination. The key question is then how does alkene coordination take place. Early studies pointed out that Heck reactions of aryl or vinyl halides promoted by (bisphosphine)palladium complexes could be sluggish, and this sluggishness was attributed to a reluctance of one of the phosphines of the... 

For the case of tri(o-tolyl)phosphine-ligated catalysts, the upper pathway appears to predominate. Oxidative addition occurs first via loss of a ligand from the bisphosphine precursor to form the oxidative adduct, which exists as a dimer bridged through the halogen atoms (equation 33). This dimer is broken up by amine, the coordination of which to palladium renders its proton acidic. Subsequent deprotonation by base leads to the amido complex, which can then reductively eliminate to form the product. When tert-butoxide is used as the base, the rate is limited by formation of and reductive elimination from the amido complex, while for the stronger hexamethyldisilazide, the rate-determining step appears to be oxidative addition. ... 

As far as the bromoarenes are concerned, the oxidative addition to Pd complexes containing the ligands L = l-AdP(t-Bu)2 and L = CyP(t-Bu)2 appeared to occur by two competitive paths involving rate-determining reactions of bisphosphine complexes to give rise to monophosphine intermediates (i.e. pathway B and pathway C). Besides, the oxidative addition to Pd complexes with the hgand... 

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