Low-valent cobalt catalyzed direct dehydroxylative cross-coupling of benzyl alcohols with aryl-chlorides

Abstract

The direct functionalization of alcohols via C–O bond cleavage is a synthetically valuable but challenging transformation. In this work, we report a reductive C(sp³)–C(sp²) cross-coupling reaction between benzyl alcohols and a broad range of aryl chlorides. The success of this transformation is attributed to the development of low-coordinate cobalt/bipyridine complexes, which enable the selective conversion of benzyl alcohols into the corresponding diarylmethanes, while minimizing undesired homocoupling of either the benzyl alcohol or aryl chlorides.