Native Carboxylate Assisted Palladium/Norbornene Mediated Distal C-H functionalization of Ferrocene

Abstract

Herein, we disclose a ligand-enabled, auxiliary-free, native carboxylate assisted Pd/norbornene(NBE) mediated highly regioselective C(3)-arylation of commercially available ferrocene carboxylic acids. This unique approach utilizes the Catellani-type reaction for the distal C-H activation in ferrocene where the weak chelation-assisted palladacycle formed by proximal C-H activation relays the palladium to the distal C(3)-position mediated by NBE, resulting into C-C bond formation with aryl iodides.