Palladium-Catalyzed Asymmetric C-C Bond Activation/Carbonylation of Cyclobutanones.

A palladium-catalyzed asymmetric C-C bond activation/carbonylation of cyclobutanones with CO has been developed. This reaction provided an efficient method for the synthesis of chiral indanones bearing a quaternary carbon stereocenter in good yields with an excellent enantiomeric ratio, exhibiting good functional group tolerance. Transformations of the products to chiral 3,4-dihydroquinolin-2(1 H )-one and 1 H -indene further demonstrated the versatility of this reaction.