Anna Kurokhtina about the goals and content of the project:

“While implementing the project, we plan to solve a number of tasks related to the determination of details of the mechanism of reactions of the oxidative combination of arylboron derivatives with alkenes and alkynes. In other words, we have to determine the features of the reactions at the molecular level. Another direction of our research will be determination of a possible contribution to the transformation of substrates of the so-called cooperative mechanism of catalysis, which means the activation of two reacting molecules with different forms of palladium. In case of implementation of cooperative catalysis in oxidative combination reactions, additional possibilities open up for controlling the activity and selectivity of two different palladium centers that activate the combined components.

The tasks set in the project will be solved with the help of a set of approaches developed by our scientific group earlier and tested on cross-coupling reaction of aryl halides with various nucleophiles based on the establishment of patterns of behavior of catalytic systems over time. As has been repeatedly demonstrated earlier, such a set of methods in which the main studied parameter is the differential selectivity of the catalyst, in other words, its ability to participate more actively in the transformation of the reaction in one direction or another allows us to obtain correct results even in conditions of complex processes involving a catalyst occurring simultaneously with the main studied reaction. This advantage is especially relevant given the lack of reliable data on the nature of these processes, which include the formation of inactive forms of the catalyst, resulting in a loss of catalytic activity, which is typical for the reactions of oxidative combinations of alkenes and alkynes with arylboron derivatives.

The main result of the project is supposed to be a construction of a well-founded model of the mechanism of reactions of oxidative combinations of alkenes and alkynes with arylboron acids, taking into account the processes of formation and deactivation of active palladium compounds. The obtained results will be used to develop catalytic and substrate systems of oxidative combination reactions that are the most effective from the economic and environmental points of view.”