A series of Pd-N-heterocyclic carbene (Pd-NHC) complexes with various NHC, halide and pyridine ligands (PEPPSI (pyridine, enhanced, precatalyst, preparation, stabilisation and initiation) precatalysts) were prepared, and the effects of these ligands on catalyst activation and performance were studied in the Kumada-Tamao-Corriu (KTC), Negishi, and Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions. The lowered reactivity of more hindered 2,6-dimethylpyridyl complex 4 in the Negishi and KTC reactions is consistent with slow reductive dimerisation of the organometallic reaction partner during precatalyst activation. Comparative rate studies of complexes 1, 4 and 5 in the KTC and Suzuki-Miyaura reactions verify that 4 activated more slowly than the others. A potential on/off mechanism of pyridine coordination to NHC-Pd(0) is also plausible, in which the more basic pyridine stays bound for longer.

An easily employed, highly versatile Kumada–Tamao–Corriu (KTC) protocol utilizing the PEPPSI (Pyridine, Enhanced, Precatalyst, Preparation, Stabilization and Initiation) precatalysts 1 and 2 is detailed. The ease‐of‐use of these catalysts and the synthesis of a wide range of hindered biaryls, large coupling partners and drug‐like heterocycles, in high yield, makes the PEPPSI‐KTC protocol very attractive. The high reactivity of the PEPPSI system allowed a tetra‐ortho‐substituted heterocycle, 11 to be synthesized at room temperature for the first time using any protocol. The PEPPSI protocols also tolerated the Boc protecting group and phenols required no protection in modified conditions. A relatively large scale (10 g) reaction was also performed with no loss in performance. Furthermore, PEPPSI‐IPr, 1, was compared to previously reported highly active phosphine ligands 42, 43, and 44 and was shown to result in significantly better yields under identical conditions. Finally, we demonstrated that the PEPPSI catalyst system is very adept at performing sequential KTC coupling reactions, analogous to multicomponent reactions, which allow complex polyaryl and polyheteroaryl architectures to be produced in one single operation.

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