A chelation-assisted palladium-catalyzed CC bond cleavage of α, β-unsaturated ketone to form alkenyl nitrile in the presence of nitrile is disclosed on the basis of a formal group-exchange reaction formulated as C1C2 + C3 → C1C3 + C2, differing from normal alkene oxidative cleavage and metathesis type. The isolated key active Pd­(II) complex as well as deuterium-labeled experiment revealed the necessity of the chelation group, and a plausible catalytic pathway was proposed.

2,2'-Diformyl-1,1'-binaphthyl is found to exhibit highly enantioselective fluorescence enhancement in the presence of various β-amino alcohols and base. It provides a new method to determine the enantiomeric composition of those substrates and has potential for high throughput analysis. Based on detailed spectroscopic analyses, it is proposed that a stereoselective cyclization of a β-amino alcohol with the probe should occur to form a rigid macrocyclic intermediate, contributing to the greatly enhanced fluorescence.

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