Tertiary arsine ligands for Stille coupling reaction

Stille coupling reaction is one of the most important coupling reactions. It is well known that triphenylarsine ligand can accelerate the reaction rate of Stille coupling. However, other arsine ligands have never been investigated for the Stille coupling reaction so far. In this work, we prepared 13 kinds of C3-symmetrical tertiary arsine ligands, and revealed that tri(p-anisyl)arsine is the best ligand for the reaction of tributylvinyltin and p-iodoanisole. The reaction mechanism was studied by density functional theory calculations to demonstrate that the oxidative addition and transmetalation could be a rate-determining step, which can be promoted by tri(p-anisyl)arsine.