An efficient palladium-benzimidazolyl phosphine complex for the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling of aryl mesylates: facile ligand synthesis and metal complex characterization.

A new class of easily accessible hemilabile benzimidazolyl phosphine ligands has been developed. The ligand skeleton is prepared from commercially available and inexpensive o-phenylenediamine and 2-bromobenzoic acid. With catalyst loading down to 0.5 mol% palladium, excellent catalytic activity towards the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling of aryl mesylates is still observed. This represents the lowest catalyst loading achieved so far for this reaction in general. X-Ray crystallography shows that new ligand L2 is coordinated with Pd in a κ(2)-P,N fashion.