The purpose of this article is to give a brief review of weak chelation-assistance as a powerful means for the rhodium-catalyzed annulation of arenes with alkynes. The use of commonly occurring functional groups (e.g., ketones, aldehydes, carboxylic acids and alcohols) as the directing groups enriches the versatility of auxiliary ligands and extends the scope of products. This short article offers an overview on emerging procedures, highlights their advantages and limitations, and covers the latest progress in the rapid synthesis of organic functional materials and natural products.

A concise, highly efficient palladium-catalyzed direct C-H (hetero)arylation is developed to modularly assemble a diketopyrrolopyrrole (DTDPP)-based polymer library to screen low-bandgap and near-infrared (NIR) absorbing materials. The DTDPP-based copolymers P1 and P2 with an alternating donor-acceptor-donor-acceptor (D-A-D-A) sequence and the homopolymer P9 exhibit planarity and excellent π-conjugation, which lead to low bandgaps (down to 1.22 eV) as well as strong and broad NIR absorption bands (up to 1000 nm).

Through the nickel-catalyzed chelation-assisted C-H bond activation strategy, the addition-type alkenylation of unreactive β-C(sp(3))-H bonds of aliphatic amides with internal alkynes is developed for the first time to produce γ,δ-unsaturated carboxylic amide derivatives. The resulting alkenylated products can further be transformed into polysubstituted γ-butyrolactones with pyridinium chlorochromate (PCC).

Rhodium(iii)-catalyzed C–H annulation of N-arylpyridinium salts with internal alkynes directly affords substituted cationic 12-azapyrene salts, which exhibit tunable and intense fluorescence.