Synthesis of aryl-substituted indanones and indenes via a highly efficient ligand-free palladium-catalyzed Suzuki coupling process

Strategically substituted indene derivatives are useful building blocks for high efficiency olefin polymerization metallocene catalysts. In this paper, various 4-aryl-substituted 2-methyl-1H-indanones were prepared efficiently using a ligand-free palladium-catalysed Suzuki coupling procedure. Quantitative yields of indanone intermediates were achieved for most of the non-coordinative substrates with a loading of 0.005 mol% of palladium catalyst. The corresponding indene derivatives were obtained in high purity and multi-gram scale in excellent yields, following a simple sequential reduction and dehydration procedure.