Mechanism of Palladium Amide Formation from Amines

1 Mechanism of Palladium Amide Formation from Amines 

In the original process using tin amides, transmetallation formed the amido intermediate. However, this synthetic method is outdated and the transfer of amides from tin to palladium will not be discussed. In the tin-free processes, reaction of palladium aryl halide complexes with amine and base generates palladium amide intermediates. One pathway for generation of the amido complex from amine and base would be reaction of the metal complex with the small concentration of amide that is present in the reaction mixtures. This pathway seems unlikely considering the two directly observed alternative pathways discussed below and the absence of benzyne and radical nucleophilic aromatic substitution products that would be generated from the reaction of alkali amide with aryl halides. 

An alternative pathway when soluble alkoxide or silylamido bases are used, involves reaction of a palladium amido aryl complex with the alkoxide or silylamide to form an intermediate alkoxide or amide. These complexes can react with amines to form the required amido aryl intermediate. This pathway seems to occur for aryl halide animations catalyzed by complexes with chelating ligands. The inorganic 

The reaction of (Pd(PPh3)(Ph)(p-OH) 2 with primary alkylamines to generate palladium amido complexes and water (Eq. (47)) [56,207] was an initial indication that the conversion of an alkoxide to an amide could be occurring during the catalytic cycle. These reactions are reversible, but the equilibrium favors the amido complex. 

The formation of alkoxo intermediates may be occurring when monophosphines are used, but the stability of the amine complexes favors the deprotonation of coordinated amine. Instead, the alkoxo complexes may be important in catalytic systems involving chelating ligands [51]. Indeed, the DPPF complex [Pd(DPPF)(p-Bu C6H4)(0-f-Bu) reacted with diphenyl amine, aniline, or piperidine, as shown in Eq. (48), to give the product of amine arylation in high yields in each case [51]. Since, no alkali metal is present in this stoichiometric reaction, the palladium amide is formed by a mechanism that cannot involve external deprotonation by alkali metal base. 

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