Modern Heck Reactions - New Trends in Cross-Coupling: Theory and Applications - page 355

CHAPTER 9
Modern Heck Reactions
IRINA P. BELETSKAYA* AND ANDREI V. CHEPRAKOV
Department of Chemistry, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119991,
Russia
*Email: [e-mail]
9.1 Introduction
In recent years, the chemistry owing its birth to Richard Heck, joint winner
of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2010, has shown vigorous advances. In
fact, the name of Heck is linked primarily with the now classical Mizoroki-
Heck reaction, and the topic 1 that appeared just before the Nobel award is
entitled, rightfully so, The Mizoroki-Heck Reaction. However, Heck himself
developed not one, but rather a whole family of transition metal-catalysed
transformations, only one of which is the Mizoroki-Heck reaction. The de-
velopment of ideas contained in the papers by Heck and his contemporaries
gave rise to a whole new field of chemistry, mediated by transition metal
intermediates, involving both truly catalytic and stoichiometric processes,
and extremely flexible with respect to substrates, precatalysts, reaction
media, synthetic tools and goals achieved, but based on the same funda-
mental elementary process, the carbometallation of multiple bonds. Such
processes can be referred to as the generic Heck reaction.
The history of Heck chemistry begins not with the development of cata-
lytic arylation driven by the Pd(0)/Pd(II) catalytic cycle, but instead with
stoichiometric reactions with a Pd(II) reagent, initially understood as an
electrophile, similar to such well-known metallic electrophiles as Hg(II)
salts. The chemistry was initiated and developed simultaneously by Heck
working for Hercules Inc. and Fujiwara, Moritani and co-workers in Japan.