Transition-metal-catalyzed cross-couplings are essential methods to construct C-C bonds for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and natural products, since the pioneering work of Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki. Among the widely used group 8–10 metal catalyst, economical cobalt salts are advantageous to replace expensive and toxic catalysts for cross-coupling reactions. In this lecture, in the first part, we will present some cobalt-catalyzed reductive cross-couplings using cheap and abundant electrophiles instead of C-Halide such as C-O/C-CN/C-S electrophiles as versatile and sustainable synthetic tool for selective C-C bond formation,.

In the second part, we will show that the Co-catalyzed cross-coupling of C-N electrophiles with organozinc species is also possible.