Preparation of functionalized aryl(diallyl)ethoxysilanes and their palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions giving sol-gel precursors

A series of molecular building blocks containing allylsilyl groups, which can be incorporated into the appropriate sol-gel precursors as fragments, were prepared. The allylsilyl group is retained unchanged over the course of all reactions giving sol-gel precursors and behave as the synthetic equivalent of alkoxysilyl groups toward sol-gel polymerization, but are stable enough to allow purification by silica gel chromatography. These allylsilanes were successfully used as building blocks to construct functional sol-gel precursors via palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.