Co-Catalyzed Tandem Radical Cyclization/Cross-Coupling Reactions

Significance This work is a significant contribution into the design of new transition-metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, an extremely important field of modern synthetic organic chemistry. So far, not so many methods exist for a successful coupling of β-hydrogen-containing alkyl halides. Importantly, the authors demonstrated that the proper choice of the ligand for cobalt(II) can overcome many difficulties connected with this process. The radical character of the intermediates in Co-catalyzed couplings of Grignard reagents allowed performing a number of interesting and synthetically useful transformations.