The efficacy of custom surfactant FI-750-M, designed to mimic polar solvents such as DMF and 1,4-dioxane, has been demonstrated with the palladium-catalyzed sp 2 -sp 3 coupling of nitroalkanes to aryl bromides using a heteroleptic palladium catalyst under unprecedentedly mild conditions. Optimized reaction conditions mostly provided good yields up to gram scale, with high selectivity and functional group tolerance for a wide scope of aryl bromides. Use of surfactant FI-750-M makes water the gross reaction medium and enables in-flask recycling. The behavior of the surfactant has been elucidated with DLS and cryo-TEM measurements, and mechanistic investigations have revealed the importance of the π-allyl ligand in the catalytic cycle.

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Proline-based designer surfactant FI-750-M has been demonstrated to enable selective nucleophilic aromatic substitution of polyfluoro(hetero)arenes by sulfinate salts in water under mild micellar conditions.