Nickel-Catalyzed Four-Component Carbocarbonylation of Alkenes under 1 atm of CO.

Transition-metal-catalyzed carbonylation is one of the most straightforward strategies to prepare carbonyl compounds. However, compared to well established noble-metal-catalyzed carbonylation reactions, analogue coupling via base-metal, nickel catalysis has received less attention because of the easy formation of highly toxic and unreactive Ni(CO)4 species between Ni(0) and CO. To date, the use of inexpensive and widely available carbon monoxide (CO) gas for nickel-catalyzed carbonylation reaction remains challenging, and nickel-catalyzed four-component carbonylative reaction has not been re-ported yet. Here, we report a highly selective nickel-catalyzed four-component carbocarbonylation of alkenes under one atmosphere (1 atm) of CO gas to efficiently achieve an array of complex carbonyl compounds, including fluorinated amino acids and oligopeptides of great interest in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. This reaction relies on a nickel-catalyzed one-pot cascade process to assemble CO, arylboronic acids, difluoroalkyl electrophiles across the carbon-carbon double bond of alkenes, paving a new way for base-metal-catalyzed carbonylative cascade reaction.