Cyclopalladated complexes of tertiary arylamines as highly efficient catalysts using in the Heck reactions

Cyclopalladated complexes of tertiary arylamines are reported in this paper as highly efficient catalysts for the Heck reactions of iodoarenes with methylacrylate. The monomeric complexes (2 and 4), which contain mixed phosphorous–nitrogen (P–N) donors, were found to be more active than the corresponding dimeric ones, which contain only single nitrogen donor. Palladium mirror was observed, indicating the involvement of classic Pd(0)/Pd(II) catalytic cycle using these cyclopalladated complexes.