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Suzuki coupling of 1,4-dioctyloxy-2,5-diiodobenzene and phenylboronic acid

SyntheticPage 767

Submitted: October 3, 2014, published: October 6, 2014

Authors

Garrett Cairo (cairog@berea.edu)

Nicholas Marshall (marshalln@berea.edu)

A contribution from 

Reaction Scheme

Chemicals

Dimethyformamide, Acros, extra dry
1,4-dioctyloxy-2,5-diiodobenzene (see References)
PdCl2dppf, Sigma-Aldrich
potassium carbonate, Sigma-Aldrich, 99%
phenylboronic acid, Sigma-Aldrich
Ethyl acetate
0.1M hydrochloric acid
0.1M sodium hydroxide
saturated sodium chloride solution
anhydrous sodium sulfate methanol
dichloromethane
hexane

Procedure

1,4-dioctyloxy-2,5-diiodobenzene (12.90 g, 22 mmol), phenylboronic acid (6.29 g, 49 mmol, 2.2 eq.) potassium carbonate (7.297 g, 52.8 mmol, 2.4 eq), and PdCl2dppf (0.719 g, 0.88 mmol,  0.04 eq) were combined with a magnetic stirbar in a 500-mL 3-neck round-bottom flask with two of the necks stopped with septa and one fitted with a reflux condenser. Dimethylformamide (200 mL) was added, and the suspension was purged by bubbling with nitrogen gas from a long stainless steel needle. The purging was stopped and the reaction placed under normal nitrogen flow, and the reaction was heated at 80°C for 5 h using a mineral oil bath with a thermometer.

The reaction mixture was poured into a 1 L separatory funnel along with ethyl acetate (100 mL) and water (100mL) and swirled thoroughly. The aqueous layer was removed and the remaining organic layer washed twice with water, once with 0.1M hydrochloric acid, once with 0.1M sodium hydroxide, and once with brine. The resulting organic layer was dried over sodium sulfate and rotary evaporated to dryness, yielding a black solid.

The resulting solid was dissolved in a minimal amount of dichloromethane and poured onto a glass fritted funnel under water-aspirator suction that has been loaded with a 1-2 inch plug of flash-chromatographic grade silica gel. (See Author’s Comment) The crude product was eluted from the silica by pouring several portions of 20% dichloromethane in hexanes over the silica under vacuum, using an approximate total of 150-200 mL eluent. The solution in the filtering flask was rotary evaporated to dryness, giving a beige solid. The solid was dissolved in minimal dichloromethane and methanol slowly added until precipitate appeared, followed by cooling in an ice bath, filtration, and washing with cold methanol to give white crystalline product (4.80g, 10.23 mmol, 47% yield).

Author Comments

  • We prepared this molecule and several in the same category in the process of synthesizing monomers for conjugated polymer synthesis. The Suzuki coupling, in our hands, is much cleaner for assembling terphenyl derivatives than Kumada coupling. We prepared the 1,4-diiodo starting material using the procedure in the Lead Reference. We have also recently published a Synthetic Page procedure for a simpler and more environmentally friendly preparation of the same material.
  • Nitrogen was bubbled through the reaction by sticking a disposable 22-gauge needle into one of the septa as a vent, then sticking the long needle into the base of the flask through the other septum. We then adjusted the nitrogen flow on the manifold to a slow bubbling, opened the valve to the reaction, and capped the exit bubbler with a latex pipet bulb. (This is preferable to shutting off the exit valve entirely, to avoid excess pressure buildup if the needle should become clogged; the pipet bulb is a nice simple pressure-relief valve)
  • TLC was checked at several points in the reaction. Product appeared as a purple fluorescent spot on TLC under 254 nm UV light, Rf = 0.6 in 5% ethyl acetate/ hexanes on silica. In solution, the product fluoresces a brilliant blue under 365 nm UV light.
  • The “plug column” with the fritted funnel is a crude dry-column vacuum chromatography technique that is better at removing moderately polar impurities than a Celite plug at the cost of some product which remains absorbed. With a colorless product such as this one, we usually add eluent until it appears that colored impurities are about to break through the plug. We also demonstrate this technique in SyntheticPage 759.
  • Multiple crops of crystals can be harvested after the first crystallization from DCM/methanol, with diminishing yields each time.
  • We used this procedure to prepare the methoxy and ethoxy relatives of this product as well, with no major modifications to the procedure. We have also performed it on a smaller 2.4 mmol scale (of the diiodo coupling partner) with a similar (49%) overall yield.
  • We also carried out the reaction with similar results using 4 mol% Pd(OAc)2 and 4 equivalences of triphenyl phosphine relative to the Pd(OAc)2.

Data

1H NMR (CDCl3, δ vs. TMS, 300 MHz): 7.61 (dt, 4H) 7.42 (tt, 4H) 7.33 (tt, 2H) 6.99 (s,2H) 3.91 (t, 4H) 1.68 (p, 4H) 1.25 (m, 20H) 0.88 (t, 6H)

13C INEPT NMR (CDCl3, δ vs. TMS, 75 MHz): 129.5 (CH); 127.8 (CH); 126.8 (CH); 116.3 (CH); 69.6 (CH2O); 31.7 (CH2); 29.1 (CH2); 26.0 (CH2); 22.6 (CH2); 14.1 (CH3).

Melting point 57.0-58.1°C (uncorrected)

Lead Reference

N. Marshall, S.K. Sontag, and J. Locklin. Macromolecules, 2010, 43, 2137-2144 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ma902710j

Other References

N. Ebai and N. Marshall, ChemSpider SyntheticPages, 2014, http://cssp.chemspider.com/762

Keywords

alkyl/alkenyl/aryl halides, aromatics/arenes, carbocyclic compounds, Suzuki, transition metal catalysed

Comments

Boroxine?
Hi, Thanks for sharing, nice work. I never get this thing with trimerization / anhydride formation with aryl-boronic acid. You seem to use 1 eq, boronic acid per iodine. I have no expereince with Suzuki but will soon do a lots of these couplings and I want to understand this issue once and for all. WHen working with boronic acid should the stochiometry be calculated based on trimer or monomer? To avoid this issue I was thinking to simply opt for boronates like pinacol or potassium trifluoroborates. Would that be better idea or just to stick with boronic acids? Please enlighten me.
By Gains on December 13, 2015
Prep of the pinacol is not hard from the free boronic acid, but we never had any trouble based on assuming that the acid was in the free acid form.
By Nicholas Marshall on December 6, 2017