Iridium copper catalyzed synthesis

Significant progress has been made in the fields of ruthenium-, iron-, iridium-, rhodium-, and copper-catalyzed cascade reactions. Noticeably, these transition metal catalysts are critically important in numerous commercial chemical processes. Discoveries of new cascade processes along with improvements in the activity, selectivity, and scope of these catalysts could drastically reduce the environmental impact and increase the sustainability of chemical reactions. From the viewpoint of practical applications, iron and copper are the most abundant metals on Earth and, consequently, inexpensive and environmentally friendly. Moreover, many iron and copper salts and complexes are commercially available or are described in the literature. Due to these advantages, the development and applications of iron- and copper-catalyzed cascade reactions are becoming a thriving area of organic synthesis chemistry. 

Much effort has been devoted to developing catalysts that control the enantioselectiv-ity of these substitution reactions, as well as the regioselectivity of reactions that proceed through unsymmetrical allylic intermediates. A majority of this effort has been spent on developing palladium complexes as catalysts. Increasingly, however, complexes of molybdenum, tungsten, ruthenium, rhodium, and iridium have been studied as catalysts for enantioselective and regioselective processes. In parallel with these studies of allylic substitution catalyzed by complexes of transition metals, studies on allylic substitution catalyzed by complexes of copper have been conducted. These reactions often occur to form products of Sj 2 substitution. As catalylic allylic substitution has been developed, this process has been applied in many different ways to the synthesis of natural products. ... 

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