Chlorobenzene → 2-Methylbiphenyl

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Reaction Steps

The general procedure from Example 16 was followed using chlorobenzene (1.126 g, 10.0 mmol) and o-tolylmagnesium chloride (15 mL, 15.0 mmol) with Ni(COD)2 (83.4 mg, 0.303 mmol) and (Me3C)2PH(O) (50.0 mg, 0.303 mmol) in 20.0 mL of THF. After 15 h at room temperature, the reaction mixture was quenched with 10 mL of H2O. The mixture above was extracted with 3×50 mL of diethyl ether. The combined ether extracts were dried over MgSO4, filtered, and the ether and THF removed from the filtrate by rotary evaporation. The resulting residues were chromatographed on silicon gel using ethyl acetate/hexane (5% volume ratio) as eluant. The eluate was concentrated by rotary evaporation followed by high vacuum to yield 1.62 g (96% yield) of 2-phenyltoluene. It was >95% pure by 1H NMR. 1H NMR (500 MHz, CDCl3): δ 7.62-7.47 (m, 9H), 2.50 (s, 3H) ppm. 13C NMR (125 MHz, CDCl3): δ 142.0, 141.9, 135.2, 130.3, 129.7, 129.1, 128.0, 127.2, 126.7, 125.7, 20.4. ppm.

Provenance & Evidence