Chemistry Nobel Prize 2010, Suzuki and Heck

[mississippichem]

The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2010 went to Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their work with organopalladium catalyzed cross couplings. Examples include:

 

Suzuki Reaction:

 

 

Heck Reaction:

 

 

where the palladium catalyst is often an organopalladium(0) species such as tetrakis(triphenylphosphino)palladium(0).

 

I have a feeling this chemistry will change future organic classes significantly. Now there is finally a way, though not entirely unrestricted, to just piece together linear alkyl and alkenyl fragments like toy bricks. There have been reactions like this reported before, see the dreaded "Wurtz-type couplings" but they almost always resulted in a menagerie of side products that were the result of pure statistical recombination; and appreciable yield could only be reached in totally symmetrical reactions. I cited one of Heck's works in a beast of a paper that I worked on for school over the course of the last year [on noble metal photo-dynamic drugs]; and I have noticed, while "journal prospecting" in the library that the work of Suzuki and Heck has started a huge trend in neutral-metal/[ce]\pi[/ce] ligand catalyzed asymmetric couplings. I think this work is of such utility organic chemistry textbooks, even on the undergraduate level, will be forced to cover the material as it will become common lab practice.

 

*reaction scheme's courtesy of Wikipedia, my Chem-draw hand felt lazy.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

[Horza2002]

Yes they certainly deserve the NObel prize..these reactions are extremely useful; espeically in making biaromatic systems whihc is very difficult otherwise. With that said, palladium is becoming more and more expensive not to mention the trouble you have to go through to get it out and the end of your reaction. Once the next batch of solid-supported palladium reagents come out these reactions will be the new Wittig!