Award Address (Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods sponsored by the Purdue Borane Research Fund and the Herbert C. Brown Award Endowment). Nucleophilic substitution reactions: A radical alternative to S_N1 and S_N2 reactions

Abstract

Classical methods for achieving nucleophilic substitutions of alkyl electrophiles (S_N1 and S_N2) have limited scope and are not generally amenable to enantioselective variants that employ readily available racemic electrophiles. In this presentation, we will describe how the combination of radical chem. and transition-metal catalysis has opened the door to addressing the challenges of reactivity and of enantioselectivity in nucleophilic substitution reactions of secondary and tertiary alkyl electrophiles.

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