Heck reaction traditional methods

The palladium-catalyzed Heck carbonylation reaction is a powerful means of generating amides, esters, and carboxylic acids from aryl halides or pseudohalides [28]. The development of rapid, reliable, and convenient procedures for the introduction of carbonyl groups is important for the development of high throughput chemistry in general and high-speed microwave-mediated chemistry in particular. Unfortunately, the traditional method of introducing carbon monoxide into a reaction mixture via a balloon or gas tube is not practical because of the special requirements of microwave synthesis. 

The palladium-catalysed addition of aryl, vinyl, or substituted vinyl groups to organic halides or triflates, the Heck reaction, is one of the most synthetically useful palladium-catalysed reactions. The method is very efficient, and carries out a transformation that is difficult by more traditional techniques. The mechanism involves the oxidative addition of the halide, insertion of the olefin, and elimination of the product by a p-hydride elimination process. A base then regenerates the palladi-um(0) catalyst. The whole process is a catalytic cycle. 

Hu et al. [104] disclosed that the spiro phosphine oxide ligand (/ )-30a is highly efficient for the Pd-catalyzed Heck reaction of cyclic and heterocyclic olefins with aryl triflates. An asymmetric domino Heck cyclization was established using catalyst Pd/(/ )-30a to form fused carbo- and heterocycles with excellent stereoselectivity (Scheme 42) [105]. This method was used in a short synthesis of (-)-martinellic acid, a primary ingredient in traditional eye medicine in South America. 

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