Goldilocks and the three ligands

摘要

The Stille reaction is an important tool in the synthesis of complicated organic structures and involves a crucial transmet- allation step in which an organic fragment is transferred from a tin reagent to a palladium complex. Experimental results have previously suggested that the transmetallation step is hindered at one extreme by very bulky ligands L on the PdL2 catalyst; yet at the other extreme, transmetallation is also found to be slow for small ligands.