Ru-Catalyzed Regiospecific Borylation of Methyl C-H Bonds

Significance

Alkylboronic derivatives are recently gaining interest as synthetic intermediates, due to the raising amount of newly discovered transformations involving these versatile organometallics. Direct catalytic C-H activation is a new synthetic approach which is of great interest and offers new ways of functionalization of organic substrates. This is the first report of the use of relatively inexpensive ruthenium catalysis for the borylation of simple alkanes. The reaction is highly selective for Me groups and requires 2-5 mol% of Ru species as catalyst. β-Amino- and -alkoxyboronic derivatives, unavailable by conventional organometallic methods, can be obtained from the corresponding N- and O-alkyl species using this elegant approach.