Stereoconvergent Negishi Arylations of Racemic Secondary Alkyl Electrophiles: Differentiating between a CF3 and an Alkyl Group

In this report, we establish that a readily available nickel/bis(oxazoline) catalyst accomplishes a wide array of enantioconvergent cross-couplings of arylzinc reagents with CF3-substituted racemic secondary alkyl halides, a process that necessitates that the chiral catalyst be able to effectively distinguish between a CF3 and an alkyl group in order to provide good ee. We further demonstrate that this method can be applied without modification to the catalytic asymmetric synthesis of other families of fluorinated organic compounds.