Title:“Elementary 1,4-Addition Reactions”on Nickel and Cobalt

 Speaker:Professor Zhou Jianrong(Professor at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School)

 Time:June 16,2025(Monday)10:00 AM–11:30 AM

 Venue:Meeting Room on the Fourth Floor of the Shaw Engineering Building,School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

 Inviter:Professor Zeng Wei

 Organizing Unit:School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering/Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Functional Molecules

 Speaker Profile:

 Professor Steve Zhou 1998, B.Sc. and 2000, M.Sc. in chemistry at the National University of Singapore (Supervisor: Teck-Peng Loh). 2000-2005, Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (supervisor: Gregory Fu). 2005-2008, Postdoctoral researcher, Yale University and later, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (supervisor: John Hartwig). 2008-2019, Nanyang Assistant Professor, Senior Research Scientist, Nanyang Technological University, with joint appointment of Singapore National Research Foundation Fellow (2008-2013). Since 2019, Associate Professor, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. Since 2021, “Pengcheng Kongque” Program Professor of Shenzhen.

 Research field: asymmetric catalytic reactions using transition metal complexes.

 Abstract:

 In studies of nickel- and cobalt-catalyzed conjugate reductive arylation and alkenylation, we discovered that these reactions proceeded via a novel mechanism on 3d transition metals which we called “elementary 1,4-addition”. They are different from textbook examples of 1,2-migratory insertion on noble metals such as palladium and rhodium. Factors that contribute to this reactivity difference between 3d late metals and heavier congeners are discussed. Salient features of new methods include direct use of aryl halides and alkenyl sulfonates, mild and almost neutral conditions, excellent tolerance of polar groups and weakly acidic hydrogens groups, and scalability using low loadings of catalysts (as low as 0.1%). Asymmetric reductive arylation and alkenylation of aldehydes, ketones and imines also proceeded well.