Recent remarkable development of novel transmetallating agents for cross-coupling reactions has been fascinating to many synthetic chemists because of its high reliability and wide applicability for C-C, C-O and C-N bond forming reaction.1,2) Especially, investigations on novel coupling agents involving typical heavier elements such as In, 3,4) Si, 5-7) Bi, 8,9) and Ge 10,11) attract much attention not only of heteroatom chemists, but also of synthetic chemists. These transmetallating agents can easily be activated and coupled with various organic halides under mild condition, based on a hypervalent strategy.12,13) One useful application of these transmetallating agents is carbonylative cross-coupling reaction which leads to the formation of unsymmetrical ketones in one-pot operation from an appropriate transmetallating agent and organic halides under carbon monoxide (CO) atmosphere. [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The organoantimony(III) [Sb(III)] compounds are relatively stable and can be prepared easily compared to organoantimony(V) and hypervalent antimony compounds. The facile access of Sb(III) compounds stimulated us to employ them as practical organic reagents. We have recently explored the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of Sb(III) compounds with organic halides and their versatile applicability, e.g. ethynylstibanes (1) were coupled with acyl chlorides, vinyl iodides and aryl iodides to give ethynylketones, 1,3-enynes, and arylacetylens, respectively. 22,23) We also demonstrated that these reactions were accelerated with microwave irradiation. 24) A mild and efficient Sb(III)-mediated cross-coupling reaction was also achieved with ethynyland ary-1,5-azastibocienes bearing an intramolecular N … Sb non-bonding interaction. 25,26) As an extension of the versatility of Sb(III) compounds as a transmetallating agent, we investigated the cross-coupling reaction of ethynylstibanes with aryl iodides under CO atmosphere. In the present reaction, the yield of the carbonylated coupling products is sensitive to the nature of the Pd catalyst, and superior results were obtained by using a monodentate phosphine-ligated Pd catalyst. It also appeared that a variety of unsymmetrical ethynyl ketones could be synthesized in excellent yield under high pressure condition (CO, 20 atm) even in the reactions with electron-deficient aryl iodides which usually gave inferior results due to their tendency to undergo decarbonylation.
Results and DiscussionPd-Catalyzed Carbonylative Cross-Coupling Reaction of Ethynylstibane with Aryl Iodides under CO Atmosphere In order to optimize the reaction conditions, we initially attempted the reaction of ethynyldiphenylstibane (1) and iodobezene (2a) under atmospheric CO pressure using a variety of solvents in the presence of 5 mol% of various palladium (Pd) catalysts (Table 1). The reaction did not proceed in THF or benzene which was often employed for carbonylative cross-coupling with a variety of organometallic compounds.2,14-16,18,21) For direct cross-coupling reaction of 1 and...