Iron-Catalyzed Alkylations of Aromatic Grignard Reagents

Significance

The development of iron-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions is an extremely promising field of research, taken into account the importance of this method for current organic synthesis and the multiple problems connected with commonly used Pd- and Ni-catalyzed processes. The group of Cahiez reported the first iron-catalyzed alkyl-aryl cross-coupling reaction, suitable for industrial large-scale applications. It uses only a small amount of cheap ligands TMEDA and HMTA and THF as the solvent and does not require cryogenic conditions.