Cross-couplings of unactivated secondary alkyl halides: room-temperature nickel-catalyzed Negishi reactions of alkyl bromides and iodides.

The development of a nickel- or palladium-catalyzed method for cross-coupling unactivated secondary alkyl halides has been a long-standing challenge in synthetic chemistry. This communication describes a simple catalyst system-Ni(cod)2/s-Bu-Pybox-that achieves room-temperature Negishi reactions of an array of functionalized primary and secondary alkyl bromides and iodides.