Macromolecular effect: synthesis of a ferrocenylmethylphosphine-containing polymer as highly efficient ligands for room-temperature palladium(0)-catalyzed Suzuki cross-coupling reactions of aryl chlorides.

The design and synthesis of a ferrocenylmethylphosphine-containing polymer and its application as efficient ligands for the room-temperature Pd(0)-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of aryl chlorides with arylboronic acids, for which corresponding monomeric monophosphines are totally inactive, are described. Our work demonstrated that rather small monophosphine moieties such as RPPh2 can be used as highly efficient ligands when appropriately incorporated into a rigid and sterically regular polymer network and using monophosphine-containing polymers as ligands is a feasible approach to access highly active (monophosphine)-palladium(0) complexes. The macromolecular approach described here may open a new avenue to other coordinatively unsaturated (monoligand)-transition metal complexes which are potentially useful in organic synthesis.