Iron-Catalyzed Borrowing-Hydrogen β‐C(sp3)‐Methylation of Alcohols

Herein we report the iron-catalyzed b-C(sp3)-methylation of primary alcohols using methanol as a C1 building block. This borrowing hydrogen approach employs a well-defined bench stable (cyclopentadienone)iron(0) carbonyl complex as precatalyst (5 mol %) and enables a diverse selection of substituted 2-arylethanols to undergo b-C(sp3)-methylation in good isolated yields (24 examples, 65% average yield).

Analysis of reaction products from this methodology resulted in the following data:

1H, 19F and 13C NMR raw data files

IR spectra

High resolution mass spectrometry spectra.    

Research results based upon these data are published at http://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.9b02461.