Cover Feature: Norbornene‐Mediated Palladium‐Catalysed Domino‐Type Catellani Reaction: an Efficient and Regiospecific Acylation/Suzuki Coupling of Aryl Iodides (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 24/2018)

The Cover Feature shows the successful application of a palladium‐catalysed and norbornene‐assisted Catellani reaction towards the synthesis of diaryl ketones. A wide range of aryl iodides with commercially available acyl chlorides as acylating agents and arylboronic acids as quenching reagents were used in the reactions. A plausible mechanism indicates that oxidative addition of acyl chlorides to five‐membered palladacycle intermediates to give the palladium(IV) species was a key step of this reaction. Compared with previous methods, the approach exhibited excellent regioselectivity and functional‐group tolerance, which provided a straightforward and practical way to prepare the aromatic ketones in moderate to good yields. More information can be found in the Full Paper by N. Li, Y. Tang, J. Duan, Z. Shi. et al.