Promoting Reductive Tandem Reactions of Nitrostyrenes with Mo(CO)6 and a Palladium Catalyst To Produce 3H-Indoles

Navendu Jana; Fei Zhou; Tom G Driver

doi:10.1021/jacs.5b02946

Promoting Reductive Tandem Reactions of Nitrostyrenes with Mo(CO)6 and a Palladium Catalyst To Produce 3H-Indoles

J Am Chem Soc. 2015 Jun 3;137(21):6738-41. doi: 10.1021/jacs.5b02946. Epub 2015 May 13.

Authors

Navendu Jana¹, Fei Zhou¹, Tom G Driver¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7061, United States.

PMID: 25970322
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b02946

Abstract

The combination of Mo(CO)6 and 10 mol % of palladium acetate catalyzes the transformation of 2-nitroarenes to 3H-indoles through a tandem cyclization-[1,2] shift reaction of in situ generated nitrosoarenes. Mo(CO)6 appears to have dual roles in this transformation: generate CO and promote C-N bond formation to increase the yield of the N-heterocycle product.