Dr. Jessica Hoover
West Virginia University

September 16, 2015
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
C-121

“Copper-Catalyzed Oxidative Decarboxylative Coupling Reactions“

Abstract: Decarboxylative coupling reactions are emerging as an efficient route to access a diverse array of substituted arenes from inexpensive and readily available precursors.  Unfortunately, most methods require pre-functionalized aryl halide coupling partners.  An oxidative transformation enabling the direct decarboxylative coupling with an arene C-H bond is an attractive alternative, but current methodologies suffer limitations of substrate scope. Copper catalysts offer an opportunity to overcome these challenges, yet there are limited examples of a Cu-catalyzed transformation of this type. This talk will focus on our recently developed copper-catalyzed oxidative decarboxylative C-H arylation reaction to generate biaryl products. Recent work to explore the reaction mechanism and understand the substrate limitations will also be presented.