Iron-Catalyzed Alkene Hydroalumination

Abstract

Hydroalumination of olefins generally gives thermodynamically controlled anti-Markovnikov addition selectivity in literatures. In this paper, a highly Markovnikov hydroalumination of aromatic terminal alkenes was realized to prepare various new benzylaluminum complexes by using the well-defined 2,9-diaryl-1,10-phenanthroline modified iron complex as the catalyst and commercially available DIBAL-H as the aluminum hydride reagent. This is the first ironcatalyzed alkene hydroalumination, and the regioselectivity observed in this study is different from the related reactions reported in the literatures.