Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Alberto Gobbo for his scientific publication entitled “Hydrogen bonding-enabled gold catalysis: ligand effects in gold-catalyzed cycloisomerizations in hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP)” in ChemComm. Gold catalysis has witnessed immense evolution in recent years, yet it still requires the use of activators to render the common AuCl(L)] complexes catalytically active. Herein, the H-bonding donor properties of hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) are utilized for Au–Cl bond activation and the ancillary ligand and counteranion effects on cycloisomerization reactions are showcased in HFIP as solvent. In addition, HFIP is not only a suitable solvent for gold catalysis with [AuCl(L)] complexes, but it also enables catalysis with Brønsted-basic complexes.
The work has been just accepted and it can be found at DOI: 10.1039/d2cc03056j
