N-Heterocyclic Carbenes as Key Intermediates in the Synthesis of Fused, Mesoionic, Tricyclic Heterocycles.

Coupling between 5-bromoimidazo[1,5-a]pyridinium salts and malonate or arylacetate esters leads to a facile and straightforward access to the new mesoionic, fused, tricyclic system of imidazo[2,1,5-cd]indolizinium-3-olate. Mechanistic studies show that the reaction pathway consists of nucleophilic aromatic substitution on the cationic, bicyclic heterocycle by an enolate-type moiety and in the nucleophilic attack of a transient free N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) species on the ester group; the relative order of these two steps depends on the nature of the starting ester. This work highlights the valuable implementation of free NHC species as key intermediates in synthetic chemistry, beyond their classical use as stabilizing ligands or organocatalysts.

An Original L-shape, Tunable N-Heterocyclic Carbene Platform for Efficient Gold(I) Catalysis.

The synthesis and characterization of original NHC ligands based on an imidazo[1,5-a]pyridin-3-ylidene (IPy) scaffold functionalized with a flanking barbituric heterocycle is described as well as their use as tunable ligands for efficient gold-catalyzed C-N, C-O, and C-C bond formations. High activity, regio-, chemo-, and stereoselectivities are obtained for hydroelementation and domino processes, underlining the excellent performance (TONs and TOFs) of these IPy-based ligands in gold catalysis. The gold-catalyzed domino reactions of 1,6-enynes give rise to functionalized heterocycles in excellent isolated yields under mild conditions.