General method for iron-catalyzed multicomponent radical cascades–cross-couplings

Iron links a trio Iron holds particular appeal as a catalytic metal—it is safe and abundant, as well as a mainstay of enzymatic reactivity. Nonetheless, in synthetic construction of carbon-carbon bonds, modern chemists have largely had to rely on rarer metals such as palladium. Liu et al . now report that coordination of iron by a bulky chelating phosphine ligand enables efficient mutual coupling of three different reactants—an alkyl halide, an aryl Grignard, and an olefin—to form two carbon-carbon bonds (see the Perspective by Lefèvre). A combination of Mössbauer spectroscopy, crystallography, and computational simulations illuminates the mechanism. —JSY