Abstract:
The arylation and alkenylation of alkenes under the influence of a palladium catalyst, commonly referred to as the Heck reaction, has been extensively exploited by synthetic chemists since its debut in the late 1960’s. A traditional Heck coupling is based on an aryl iodide or bromide as the electrophilic partner and a terminal alkene as the nucleophilic partner. Academic and industrial interest in this reaction has increased in recent years, fueled by the development of more active catalyst systems, the discovery of waste-free versions, and the desire to put the vast empirical data on a sound mechanistic basis. In this study, we wish to report the use of commercially available substituted pyrazolones (1-(4-Sulfophenyl)-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (L1), 1-(2,5-Dicloro-4-sulfophenyl)-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (L2) and 5-oxo-1-phenyl-2-pyrazolin-3-carboxylic acid (L3)) and pyrazoles (α-[(2-Ethoxy-2-oxoethoxy)imino]-3-pyrazole acetic acid (L4) and 3.5 dimethyl pyrazole (L5)) as auxiliary ligands in the Heck coupling reaction. These ligands were used either with PdCl2 or Pd(OAc)2 to catalyze the Heck reaction of iodobenzene with ethyl acrylate or butyl acrylate. GC-MS was used to monitor the reaction, percentage (%) conversions were determined based on the consumption of iodobenzene.
Different reaction parameters such as ligands, temperature, base, solvent and influence of time were investigated. It was observed that the lower conversion was obtained for ethyl acrylate and conversions above 80% were obtained for butyl acrylate. Ligand effect proved to be very crucial during the Heck coupling reactions of iodobenzene with butyl acrylate and ethyl acrylate. For instance in the absence of ligands with PdCl2, the conversions were 29 % and 44 % for butyl acrylate and ethyl acrylate, respectively. When Pd(OAc)2 was used in the absence of ligands the conversions were 25 % and 36 % for butyl acrylate and ethyl acrylate, respectively. In the study for the effect of temperature, 80 ◦C was observed as the best temperature since promising conversions were obtained with little or no sign of deactivation of the catalysts. On the other hand, increasing the temperature to 120 ◦C and above high percent conversions are observed; however deactivation of the catalysts occurs as observed from the precipitation of palladium black at the bottom of the vial. From the results obtained it is clear that pyrazolone and pyrazole ligands/palladium systems are important at very low catalyst loadings and mild temperatures. Based on the employed reaction conditions the influence of base suggested that the organic base triethylamine was the reagent of choice since better conversions were obtained compared to inorganic bases. The inhomogeneity of the inorganic base proved to be a disadvantage in the reaction of iodobenzene with butyl acrylate at employed reaction conditions. It was also found that parameters such as solvents and time effects were important in the Heck reaction. Polar aprotic solvents proved to be solvents of choice rather than non-polar solvents, from the investigated solvents DMF gave better conversions under the used reaction conditions giving average conversions of 78 % and 75 % for all the ligands in the presence of PdCl2 and Pd(OAc)2, respectively. During the investigation of time effect, it was noteworthy to observe that L4 had a slow initiation rate, for instance after 0.5 h conversions of 2 % and 10 % were obtained for catalytic systems, PdCl2 and Pd(OAc)2 respectively. Also it was observed that under the investigated parameters there was no need to run the reaction for 24 h because after 4 h not much of a difference in conversions was observed. In comparing the influence of these two different auxiliary ligands, pyrazolone based ligands were more efficient than pyrazole based ligands under the investigated parameters. The fully detailed information supporting this has been discussed in Chapter 4.
