JACS: research group of Professor Kong Wangqing of Wuhan University has made progress in stereoselective biarylation of olefins

The Journal of the American Chemical Society recently published the latest research results on stereoselective reduction of alkenes by Professor Kong Wangqing from the Institute of higher learning, Wuhan University This paper is entitled "Ni catalyzed enantioselective reduction of activated alkenes by domino cyclization / cross coupling, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b08190" The thesis was jointly completed by Wang Kuai (the first author), a doctoral student of the higher research institute, Ding Zhengtian, a postgraduate student, and Zhou Zhijun, with Professor Kong Wangqing as the corresponding author Olefins are cheap, easy to get and easy to prepare They are important chemical raw materials Transition metal catalyzed biarylation of olefins can introduce two different aryl groups into the double bond at the same time through one step operation, so that complex and valuable compounds with chiral centers can be constructed efficiently, which is an important topic in organic chemistry research However, the reduction of olefin to biaryletheny without the preparation of organometallic reagents has not been developed On the other hand, the asymmetric biarylation of olefins is rarely reported The research group of Professor Kong Wangqing developed a new method of olefin biarylation in mechanism: using cheap transition metal nickel as catalyst, two aryl bromines with different structures realized the asymmetric biarylation of olefins through tandem heck cyclization / reduction cross coupling reaction The reaction can be carried out under mild conditions without the use of prepared organometallic reagents It has a wide range of substrate applicability and functional group tolerance At the same time, the reaction can construct a series of biheterocyclic compounds containing chiral quaternary carbon centers from simple raw materials with high efficiency and stereoselectivity, which has potential application value in the synthesis of natural products and drug molecules The research work has been strongly supported by the national talent plan, Wuhan University high level talent plan, National Natural Science Foundation and other projects, as well as by Professor Lei Aiwen of the school of chemistry and Molecular Science in experimental space and equipment.