Publication link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51997-0

Mechanistic studies, comprising control experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, demonstrated that catalytic quantities of base facilitate the formation of a Ni(II)-Bpin-ate intermediate, which was identified as the putative active species for C(sp2)−H bond activation. The transformation proceeds via a Ni(II)/Ni(IV) catalytic manifold, providing unprecedented mechanistic insights into this transformation. This synthetic methodology, utilizing readily accessible starting materials, enables the efficient construction of ortho-borylated benzylsilanes, thereby providing versatile synthetic building blocks for accessing silicon-containing or silicon/boron-containing heterocycles with potential biological significance