Bifunctional Ru(II) complex catalysed carbon-carbon bond formation: an eco-friendly hydrogen borrowing strategy

The atom economical borrowing hydrogen methodology enables the use of alcohols as alkylating agents for selective C-C bond formation. A bifunctional 2-(2-pyridyl-2-ol)-1,10-phenanthroline (phenpy-OH) based Ru(ii) complex (2) was found to be a highly efficient catalyst for the one-pot β-alkylation of secondary alcohols with primary alcohols and double alkylation of cyclopentanol with different primary alcohols. Exploiting the metal-ligand cooperativity in complex 2, several aromatic, aliphatic and heteroatom substituted alcohols were selectively cross-coupled in high yields using significantly low catalyst loading (0.1 mol%). An outer-sphere mechanism is proposed for this system as exogenous PPh₃ has no significant effect on the rate of the reaction. Notably, this is a rare one-pot strategy for β-alkylation of secondary alcohols using a bifunctional Ru(ii)-complex. Moreover, this atom-economical methodology displayed the highest cumulative turn over frequency (TOF) among all the reported transition metal complexes in cross coupling of alcohols.