Monday, August 27, 2007
In one of the most-accessed papers in Organometallics, Professor Jarvo and graduate students Nick Barczak and Robin Grote report umpolung reactions of allylpalladium complexes. Neutral bidentate N-heterocyclic carbene ligands are sufficiently electron donating to impart nucleophilic character to allylpalladium complexes and promote attack on aldehydes. They have also demonstrated that these complexes catalyze allylation reactions, important transformations for natural product synthesis.