Water-soluble SNS cationic palladium(II) complexes and their Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reactions in aqueous medium

• Alphonse Fiebor,
• Richard Tia,
• Banothile C. E. Makhubela and
• Henok H. Kinfe

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2018, 14, 1859–1870, doi:10.3762/bjoc.14.160

• their SCS analogues, SNS pincer complexes are poorly studied for their use in coupling reactions. Accordingly, a series of water soluble cationic Pd(II) SNS pincer complexes have been successfully synthesised and investigated in detail for their catalytic activity in Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions

• investigation of the mechanism of the reaction revealed that a Pd(II) to Pd(IV) route is the more likely pathway which was further supported by computational studies. Keywords: cationic palladium(II) complexes; Pd(II)/Pd(IV) complexes; SNS pincer complexes; Suzuki–Miyaura; Introduction The Suzuki–Miyaura C–C

• , there are several examples of SCS-based palladium(II) complexes (1–13, Figure 1) which were reported to catalyse the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reaction but the corresponding easy-to-synthesise SNS pincer complexes are well underrepresented [33]. To the best of our knowledge, the only examples reported in