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Despite the ever-broadening applications of main-group ‘frustrated Lewis pair’ (FLP) chemistry to both new and established reactions, their typical intolerance of water, especially at elevated temperatures (>100 °C), represents a key barrier to their mainstream adoption. Herein we report that FLPs based on the Lewis acid iPr3SnOTf are moisture tolerant in the presence of moderately strong nitrogenous bases, even under high temperature regimes, allowing them to operate as simple and effective catalysts for the reductive amination of organic carbonyls, including for challenging bulky amine and carbonyl substrate partners.

Simple, commercially available borane adducts, H3B center dot THF and H3B center dot SMe2, have been used to catalyse the hydroboration of alkynes and alkenes with pinacolborane to give the alkenyl and alkyl boronic esters, respectively. Alkynes and terminal alkenes underwent highly regioselective hydroboration to give the linear boronic ester products. Good functional group tolerance was observed for substrates bearing ester, amine, ether and halide substituents. This catalytic process shows comparable reactivity to transition-metal-catalysed hydroboration protocols.

International audience; The cationic polymerization of isoprene using cumyl chloride/B(C6F5)(3) and cumyl ether/TiCl4 systems was investigated in dichloromethane or in dichloromethane/methylcyclohexane mixtures varying the polymerization conditions. Polymerizations were performed in all cases in the presence of a large excess of a proton trap (2,6-di-tert-butyl pyridine, d(t)BP) compared to initiator in order to suppress any protic side reactions. As a consequence, no polymerization went to completion. Independently of the reaction conditions, trans-1,4-oligomers were exclusively obtained with mainly an olefinic terminal group. It was highlighted that an important loss of double bonds yielding saturated parts was observed, even in the absence of protons, assuming that a great amount of double bond loss generally observed in isoprene cationic polymerization could be due to intramolecular cyclization reactions. Nevertheless, under particular conditions (low temperature and/or low polarity medium), branching and cross-linking reactions were also found responsible for double bond loss.

An ionic liquid encompassing a bulky tertiary amine was synthesized and used as a dual solvent-reactant for the formation of a frustrated Lewis pair with tris(pentafluorophenyl) borane, forming a pseudo-frustrated Lewis pair-ionic liquid system. The ionic liquid-LA system is prone to self-ionization, i.e. with the formation of iminium and boron hydride species, which are able to form adducts with CO2. Compared to frustrated Lewis pairs operating in organic solvents of low polarity, more forcing conditions are required for the ionic liquid system. Calculations indicate that the anion of the ionic liquid interacts with the Lewis acidic boron center, hindering reactivity, and rationalizing the low reactivity observed. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.