Both a strong electron donor (IPr) and a strong electron acceptor (P(OPh) 3 ) are necessary for a highly selective, nickel-catalyzed coupling reaction between alkenes, aldehydes, and silyltriflates. Without the phosphite, catalysis is not observed and several side reactions are observed. The phosphite appears to suppress the formation of these byproducts and rescue the catalytic cycle by accelerating reductive elimination from an (IPr-Ni-H)(OTf) complex.

A new strategy has been developed for reductive amination of aldehydes and ketones with the InCl3/Et3SiH/MeOH system, which is a nontoxic system with highly chemoselective and nonwater sensitive properties. The methodology can be applied to a variety of cyclic, acyclic, aromatic, and aliphatic amines. Functionalities including ester, hydroxyl, carboxylic acid, and olefin are found to be stable under our conditions. The reaction shows a first-order kinetics profile with respect to both InCl3 and Et3SiH. Spectroscopic techniques such as NMR and ESI-MS have been employed to probe the active and resulting species arising from InCl3 and Et3SiH in MeOH, which are important in deriving a mechanistic proposal. In the ESI-MS studies, we have first discovered the existence of stable methanol-coordinated indium(III) species which are presumably responsible for the gentle generation of indium hydride at room temperature. The solvent attribution was crucial in tuning the reactivity of [In-H] species, leading to the establishment of mild reaction conditions. The system is superior in flexible tuning of hydride reactivity, resulting in the system being highly chemoselective.

In the presence of a silyl triflate and an amine base, a nickel–phosphine complex catalyzes the direct conjugate addition of ethylene, α‐olefins, and aryl alkenes to unsaturated aldehydes and ketones. The enolsilane products are isolated in good to very high yield, and in very high stereoselectivity for some cases. The alkene is a functional equivalent of an alkenylmetal reagent in the transformation.

An asymmetric tail-to-tail cross-hydroalkenylation of vinylarenes with terminal olefins was achieved by catalysis with NiH complexes bearing chiral N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs). The reaction provides branched gem-disubstituted olefins with high enantioselectivity (up to 94 % ee) and chemoselectivity (cross/homo product ratio: up to 99:1). Electronic effects of the substituents on the vinylarenes and on the N-aryl groups of the NHC ligands, but not a π,π-stacking mechanism, assist the steric effect and influence the outcome of the cross-hydroalkenylation.