Palladium-catalyzed coupling reaction of perfluoroarenes with diarylzinc compounds.

This report describes the first Pd(0)-catalyzed cross-coupling of hexafluorobenzene (C6F6) with diarylzinc compounds to give a variety of pentafluorophenyl arenes. This reaction could be applied to other perfluoroarenes, such as octafluorotoluene, pentafluoropyridine, and perfluoronaphthalene, to give the corresponding polyfluorinated coupling products. The optimal ligand in this catalytic reaction was PCy3 , and lithium iodide was indispensable as an additive for the coupling reaction. One of the roles of lithium iodide in this catalytic reaction was to promote the oxidative addition of one C-F bond of C6F6 to palladium. Stoichiometric reactions revealed that an expected oxidative-addition product, trans-[Pd(C6F5)I(PCy3)2], generated from the reaction of [Pd(PCy3)2] with C6F6 in the presence of lithium iodide, was not involved in the catalytic cycle. Instead, a transient three-coordinate, monophosphine-ligated species, [Pd(C6F5)I(PCy3)], emerged as a potential intermediate in the catalytic cycle. Therefore, we isolated a novel Pd(II) complex, [Pd(C6F5)I(PCy3)(py)], in which pyridine (py) acted as a labile ligand to generate the transient species. In fact, in the presence of lithium iodide, this Pd(II) complex was found to react smoothly with diphenylzinc to give the desired pentafluorophenyl benzene, whereas the same reaction conducted in the absence of lithium iodide resulted in a decreased yield of pentafluorophenyl benzene, which indicated that the other role of lithium iodide was to enhance the reactivity of the organozinc species during the transmetalation step.