Pre-transmetalation intermediates in the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction revealed: The missing link

Where Pd and B meet in Suzuki coupling The Suzuki-Miyaura reaction is widely used to form carbon-carbon bonds. It operates by transferring a carbon center from boron to palladium, although the handoff itself happens too quickly to see. Thomas and Denmark have caught sight of the previously elusive intermediate complexes linking palladium to boron through an intervening oxygen. Using low-temperature nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, they characterized the intermediate structures just before the carbon transfer event. Science , this issue p. 329