US scientists have designed a scaffold that can covalently attach to substrates and induce directed functionalisation at remote C–H bonds. This should help to overcome the limited substrate scope seen with current methods for functionalising unreactive C–H bonds, in which the directing groups are generally embedded in the structure of the substrate, effectively limiting the reactions to highly specific substrate classes.
Link to journal article
Molecular Scaffolds with Remote Directing Groups for Selective Palladium-Catalyzed C-H Bond Functionalizations
E E Stache et al
Chem. Sci., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/c2sc20176c
