A hampered oxidative addition of pre-coordinated pincer ligands can favour alternative pathways of activation

Abstract

Pre-coordination to a transition metal by the terminal donor groups of a tri-dentate ligand is a common strategy to stabilise elusive groups, to achieve unprecedented bond activation and to develop novel modes of metal–ligand-cooperation for catalysis. In the current manuscript, we demonstrate that the oxidative addition of a central E–H-bond after pre-coordination to the metal centre is disfavoured for metals with d¹⁰ electron configuration. For exemplary pincer ligands and metals with d¹⁰ electron configuration, quantum chemical calculations suggest a second barrier, which is associated with the rearrangement of the saw-horse structure, obtained after oxidative addition, to the expected square planar geometry for the resulting d⁸ electron configuration. In the case of PBP-type ligands with a central L₂BH₂-group (L = R₃P) the reaction with Pt⁰ precursors proceeds via an alternative pathway of activation, which involves the backside attack of a nucleophile to the boron atom, which facilitates the nucleophilic attack of the Pt⁰ centre and formation of a boryl complex (LBH₂). As the corresponding reaction with a Pt^II precursor leads to B–H- instead of B–L-activation and formation of complex 2 with a L₂BH donor, our results show that ligand-stabilized borylenes (L₂BH) can in principle be converted to boryls (LBH₂) via boronium salts (L₂BH₂⁺).