Mechanochemical Oxidative Heck Coupling of Activated and Unactivated Alkenes: A Chemo-, Regio- and Stereo-Controlled Synthesis of Alkenylbenzenes

In this work, we present an efficient mechanochemical strategy for chemo-, regio- and stereo-selective oxidative Heck coupling of readily accessible arylboron reagents/heteroaromatics with cyclic and acyclic olefins. Mono- and bis-arylation were achieved without the need of ligands, directing groups or prefunctionalized alkenes, and the reaction chemo-selectivity could be controlled by tuning of the oxidative system. This protocol offers the synthesis of alkenylbenzenes in broad substrate scope, satisfactory yields and excellent selectivity even in the gram scale.