Some mechanistic aspects regarding the Suzuki–Miyaura reaction between selected ortho-substituted phenylboronic acids and 3,4,5-tribromo-2,6-dimethylpyridine

Piotr Pomarański,Armand Budzianowski,Piotr Roszkowski,Jan K Maurin,Zbigniew Czarnocki

doi:10.3762/bjoc.14.214

Abstract

Background: Atropisomers are very interesting stereoisomers having axial chirality resulting from restricted rotation around single bonds and are found in various classes of compounds. ortho-Substituted arylpyridines are an important group of them. A regio- and atropselective Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reaction on 3,4,5-tribromo-2,6-dimethylpyridine was studied.Results: Reactions with various amounts of ortho-substituted phenylboronic acids with 3,4,5-tribromo-2,6-dimethylpyridine gave a series of mono- di- and triarylpyridine derivatives which allowed to draw conclusions about the order of substitution. Also, the observed selectivity in the case of ortho-methoxyphenylboronic acid suggested an additional metal O-chelation effect in the transition state, apparently not present in the ortho-chloro analogues. The rotational barrier in selected atropisomers was determined on the basis of HT NMR and thermal epimerisation experiments. The structure of most presented atropisomeric derivatives of 2,6-dimethylpyridine was confirmed by single-crystal X-ray analysis. Racemic chiral, differently substituted atropisomers were also examined by 1H NMR spectroscopy in the presence of a chiral solvating agent.Conclusion: This regio- and atropselectivity may be generally applicable to other arylpyridine systems. A regio- and atropselective Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling process has been observed, giving an efficient access to a class of atropisomeric compounds. An opposite selectivity using a differently ortho-substituted phenylbornic acid was observed.

Highlights

Chiral biaryls subsist in many classes of natural and bioactive compounds [1,2] and are an essential stereochemical element of many popular, commercially available chiral catalysts [3]
As an alternative to palladium couplings, Tanaka presented an atropselective synthesis of axially chiral all-benzenoid biaryls by gold-catalysed intramolecular hydroarylation of alkynones to give the desired atropisomeric product with a good ee value of 70% [26]
In the last few years we have been interested in the phenomenon of atropisomerism occurring in ortho-substituted di, triand pentaarylpyridine derivatives [35,36,37,38]

Summary

Results

Reactions with various amounts of ortho-substituted phenylboronic acids with 3,4,5-tribromo-2,6-dimethylpyridine gave a series of mono- di- and triarylpyridine derivatives which allowed to draw conclusions about the order of substitution. The observed selectivity in the case of ortho-methoxyphenylboronic acid suggested an additional metal O-chelation effect in the transition state, apparently not present in the ortho-chloro analogues. The rotational barrier in selected atropisomers was determined on the basis of HT NMR and thermal epimerisation experiments. The structure of most presented atropisomeric derivatives of 2,6dimethylpyridine was confirmed by single-crystal X-ray analysis. Differently substituted atropisomers were examined by 1H NMR spectroscopy in the presence of a chiral solvating agent

Conclusion

Introduction

Results and Discussion