Unified Protocol for Fe-Based Catalyzed Biaryl Cross-Couplings between Various Aryl Electrophiles and Aryl Grignard Reagents.

The combination of commonly used FeCl3/SIPr with Ti(OEt)4/PhOM enabled a highly general iron-based catalyst system, which could efficiently catalyze the biaryl coupling reaction between various electrophiles (I, Br, Cl, OTs, OCONMe2, OSO2NMe2) and common or functionalized aryl Grignard reagents with high functional group tolerance. Selective couplings of aryl iodides and bromides over the corresponding oxygen-based electrophiles have been achieved, and thus a terphenyl acid intermediate for anidulafungin was conveniently synthesized via an orthogonal coupling strategy.