Reductive Elimination from Sterically Encumbered Ni-Polypyridine Complexes

Craig S Day; Stephanie J Ton; Ryan T McGuire; Cina Foroutan-Nejad; Ruben Martin

doi:10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00362

Reductive Elimination from Sterically Encumbered Ni-Polypyridine Complexes

Organometallics. 2022 Oct 10;41(19):2662-2667. doi: 10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00362. Epub 2022 Sep 21.

Authors

Craig S Day^{1

2}, Stephanie J Ton¹, Ryan T McGuire¹, Cina Foroutan-Nejad³, Ruben Martin^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Av. Països Catalans 16, 43007 Tarragona, Spain.
² Departament de Química Analítica i Química Orgànica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, c/Marcel·lí Domingo 1, 43007 Tarragona, Spain.
³ Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kasprzaka 44/52, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland.
⁴ ICREA, Passeig Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain.

Abstract

Herein we disclose the synthesis of sterically encumbered dialkylnickel(II) complexes bearing 2,9-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline ligands. A comparison with their unsubstituted analogues by both X-ray crystallography and theoretical calculations revealed significant distortions in their molecular structures. Eyring plots along with stoichiometric and photoexcitation studies revealed that sterically encumbered dialkylnickel(II) complexes enable facile C(sp ³)-C(sp ³) reductive elimination, thus offering an improved understanding of Ni catalysis.