Teaching a palladium polymerization catalyst to mono-oxygenate olefins

Catalyst systems consisting of a palladium(II) diphosphine complex with weakly or non-coordinating counterions are efficient catalysts for the hydrocarbonylation of olefins. With these catalyst systems, the oxo-synthesis can be fully exploited to produce, at will, aldehydes/alcohols by hydroformylation or monoketones by hydro-acylation of olefins. The reactions described here constitute the first examples of selective formation of ketones by hydrocarbonylation of higher olefins and the first examples of Pd catalyzed hydroformylation of olefins. Variation of ligand, anion and/or solvent can be used to steer the reaction selectively towards aldehydes/alcohols, ketones or oligoketones. Non-coordinating anions and arylphosphine ligands produce primarily (oligo)ketones; increasing ligand basicity shifts selectivity towards monoketones, while increasing ligand basicity and/or increasing anion coordination strength leads to high selectivity for hydroformylation products, aldehydes and alcohols. For the mechanisms of the aldehyde-producing step, we propose protonation of Pd(II)-acyl intermediates, assisted by the coordination of the anion, followed by reductive elimination of the aldehyde and heterolytic dihydrogen cleavage. For selective saturated monoketone formation we propose protonation at the Pd(II)-alkyl stage, now assisted by chelating carbonyl coordination followed by reductive elimination of the ketone and heterolytic dihydrogen cleavage. Unsaturated ketone formation involves g -hydride elimination from the same Pd(II)-alkyl intermediates.