Au(i)-Catalyzed hydroarylation of alkenes with N,N-dialkylanilines: a dual gold catalysis concept

In the present work, we report the efficiency of the commercially available [(PPh3)AuCl] complex in combination with a set of potassium salts to catalyze the hydroarylation of a broad variety of alkenes using N,N-dialkylanilines, leading to full conversion and complete selectivity toward the Markovnikov products. The combination of experimental information supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations provides new mechanistic insights into this challenging reaction and allows a dual gold mechanism scheme to be proposed and the interplay between structure and reactivity to be rationalized.