Lewis base directed α,α-dehydrogenation of 2-(methoxymethyl)­aniline gives a cationic iridium­(III) alkoxycarbene. This alkoxycarbene is found to be subject to pyridine-promoted C–O bond cleavage in the formation of a delocalized iridium benzylidene. X-ray diffraction and DFT calculations support a structural distortion away from a classic benzylidene structure stemming from azaquinone methide character. Treatment of the iridium azaquinone methide with ethylene results in formal ethylene insertion into the vinylic C–H bond, demonstrating an unusual mechanism for net C–C bond formation via benzylic C–O cleavage.

Nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SNAr) of fluorobenzene by morpholine at a bis(diphenylphosphino)pentane-supported ruthenim complex is investigated as a model system for π-arene catalysis through the synthesis and full characterization of proposed...

Parallel extraction of headspace volatiles from multiwell plates using sorbent sheets (HS-SPMESH) followed by direct analysis in real-time high-resolution mass spectrometry (DART-HRMS) can be used as a rapid alternative to solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME) gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS) for trace level volatile analyses. However, an earlier validation study of SPMESH-DART-MS using 3-isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine (IBMP) in grape juice showed poor correlation between SPMESH-DART-MS and a gold standard SPME-GC-MS around the compound’s odor detection threshold (<10 ng/kg) in grape juice, and lacked sufficient sensitivity to detect IBMP at this concentration in grape homogenate. In this work, we report on the development and validation of an improved SPMESH extraction approach that lowers the limit of detection (LOD < 0.5 ng/kg), and regulates crosstalk between wells (<0.5%) over a calibration range of 0.5–100 ng/kg. The optimized SPMESH-DART-MS method was validated using Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grape samples harvested from commercial vineyards in the central valley of California (n = 302) and achieved good correlation and agreement with SPME-GC-MS (R2 = 0.84) over the native range of IBMP (<0.5–20 ng/kg). Coupling of SPMESH to a lower resolution triple quadrupole (QqQ)-MS via a new JumpShot-HTS DART source also achieved low ng/kg detection limits, and throughput was improved through positioning stage optimizations which reduced time spent on intra-well SPMESH areas.