Appearing today in J. Am. Chem. Soc., Yeongyu describes our latest work on Ni(quinone) precatalysts. Building on similar themes to Zi-Qi’s preprint on 1,2-carbosulfenylation from last week, we find that the hemilabile nature of quinone ligands allows them to exhibit different coordination modes to the metal center during the catalytic cycle to tune steric and electronic properties. During the migratory insertion step, the carbonyl-bound state enhances the electrophilicty of the organonickel species, lowering the energy barrier. Yeongyu teased out these mechanistic nuances through a series of experiments and DFT calculations. From a simple computational model, he was then able to design new catalyst that offer superb product yield and substrate scope. This study grew out of a longstanding collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, particularly Dr. Steve Wisniewski.

For a link to the paper in J. Am. Chem. Soc., click here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.3c08855