A journey that begins in a former oil field in Arkansas
Suzuki reactions are dead simple – the palladium-catalysed coupling of aryl bromides or aryl iodides with aromatic boronic acids. I always wonder who makes these chemicals, and where they get their raw materials from. While the answers for carbon-based molecules are almost always simple – the petroleum industry – I am curious about the other atoms. Where did the bromine or the iodine come from? Is there a big pile of boron somewhere? (This one’s easy – there’s a town called Boron in California with the largest borax mine in the world.)