Cross Coupling of Anilines

A fascinating paper appeared on the JACS ASAP site this morning from Ueno, Chatani and Kakiuchi. They used a ruthenium catalyst to carry out a cross coupling of an aryl amine with a phenyl boronate. What is remarkable is the fact that the transition metal did oxidative addition to an aryl-nitrogen bond. Success of the reaction was dependent on having a chelating carbonyl group adjacent to the amine, however, this is still the first example of oxidative addition to a hitherto unreactive C-N bond.

Satoshi Ueno, Naoto Chatani, and Fumitoshi Kakiuchi, DOI: 10.1021/ja0713431