Can sodium make organic cross-couplings sustainable?

Cross-coupling reactions relying on comparatively rare, in-demand lithium are crucial to organic chemistry – but now Japanese chemists have shown abundant sodium can also work well. Sobi Asako, Hirotaka Nakajima, and Kazuhiko Takai at Okayama University safely produce organosodium molecules, and from them precursors for carbon–carbon bond-forming Negishi and Suzuki–Miyaura reactions. ‘We hope that this study will inspire researchers both in academia and industry who are trying to solve sustainability issues in organic synthesis,’ Asako tells Chemistry World.