Palladium catalyzed annulation of 2-iodobiphenyl with a non-terminal alkene enabled by neighboring group assistance.

In this work, an efficient palladium catalyzed annulation of 2-iodobiphenyl with a non-terminal alkene was developed. The key factor in this transformation was the formation of a highly reactive oxo-palladacycle intermediate, which was enabled by a neighboring hydroxyl group, and remarkably restrained the β-H elimination process. Mechanistically, control experiments demonstrated that the hydroxyl group may act as an anionic ligand, which was irreplaceable in this reaction. This transformation presented good reactivity and selectivity, and no simple Heck coupling products were detected for all of the explored substrates.