Altered States - C-H Borylation

Reference:
Iridium-Mediated Borylation of Benzylic C H Bonds by Borohydride, Christina Y. Tang, William Smith, Amber L. Thompson, Dragoslav Vidovic, and Simon Aldridge
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.

A nice achievement in the field of C-H Borylation. The interesting aspect is the use of a borohydride (BH4-) as the ‘boryl’ source. The group has also proposed an intriguing mechanism to rationalize the selective borylation of the benzylic C-H bond. The methyl C-H bond is activated by the iridium catalyst, and is then followed by delivering the ‘boryl’ moiety to this particular C-H bond. This ‘closed’ reactive intermediate should explain the great selectivity of the borylation reaction. This is great work because further developments will surely expand the scope of reagents used for borylating organic substrates in synthesis.