Halo-substituted benzenesulfonyls and benzenesulfinates: convenient sources of arenes in metal-catalyzed C-C bond formation reactions for the straightforward access to halo-substituted arenes.

Palladium-catalyzed reactions using aryl halides as one of the coupling partners represent a very popular method for generating carbon-carbon bonds. However, such couplings suffer from important limitations. As most palladium catalysts are very effective for the cleavage of C-halo bonds (Halo = Cl, Br or I), in many cases, the presence of several halide functional groups on arenes is not tolerated. Since two decades, and especially during the last few years, a new class of coupling partners, benzenesulfonyl and benzenesulfinate derivatives, has emerged as a powerful alternative to aryl halides for the Pd-catalyzed C-C bond formation, as the reactions performed with these substrates generally tolerate C-halo bonds. With these substrates, after a metal-catalyzed desulfitative coupling, a variety of halo-substituted arenes such as biaryls, styrenes, phenylacetylenes, acetophenones, benzonitriles… has been synthesized with high chemoselectivities. The use of these aryl sources allowed the synthesis of molecules containing several halo-substituents including iodo-substituents in only a few steps and provides very simple access to a very wide variety of halo-substituted arenes useful to materials chemists and also to biochemists. In this review, we will summarize the scope of the use of halo-substituted benzenesulfonyls and benzenesulfinates as coupling partners in metal-catalyzed C-C bond formation.

Metal-Catalyzed C-H Bond Activation of 5-Membered Carbocyclic Rings: A Powerful Access to Azulene, Acenaphthylene and Fulvene Derivatives.

Azulene, acenaphthylene and fulvene derivatives exhibit important physical properties useful in materials chemistry as well as valuable biological properties. Since about two decades ago, the metal-catalyzed functionalization of such compounds, via C-H bond activation of their 5-membered carbocyclic ring, proved to be a very convenient method for the synthesis of a wide variety of azulene, acenaphthylene and fulvene derivatives. For such reactions, there is no need to prefunctionalize the 5-membered carbocyclic rings. In this review, the progress in the synthesis of azulene, acenaphthylene and fulvene derivatives via metal-catalyzed C-H bond activation of their 5-membered carbocyclic ring are summarized.