Review Reports

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

Some minor corections should be made before the manuscript being accepted. Please see the attached document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your critical reading of the manuscript.

Typographical corrections that you suggested have been made, except for the titles of the articles in the references section. For instance, the titles were written as they appear in the literature (with capitalized letters in some cases).

A little more detailled explanation (with a reference) of the influence of substituents onto the course of the reaction have been added.

Reviewer 2 Report

This work details the synthesis of a methylfuran-derivatized terpyridine and a test of the new ligand in the homocoupling of dibenzyl.  The author has synthesized a furfural derivatized  terpyridine in the past, and he is extending this to a methyl substituted derivative.  Terpyridine ligands can be challenging to prepare, so in my opinion any new preparation of such a ligand is worthy of publication.  The work is sound, and i recommend publication provided that the following minor issues are corrected:

1) the origin of nickel/terpyridine catalyzed reaction of alkyl halides has its origins in these two papers: JACS 2004, 126, 8100 and JACS 2006, 128, 13175.  It seems appropriate that the authors add these references, as they are performing a related reaction. 

2) In many places throughout the manuscript, the "M" should not be capitalized in 4'-(5-methylfuran-2-yl)-2,2':6',2''-terpyridine.

3) First sentence, replace "nuclei" with "moieties".

4) In a couple places, the "1" in terpyridine 1 needs to be bolded.

5) When the authors refer to NMR, they should refer to "NMR spectroscopy" a few times in the text. 

Author Response

Thank you for your critical reading of the manuscript.

The two references that you suggested have been added, and the typographical errors have been corrected.

kind regards.

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors prepare a product very similar to one described (just with furan), but this methyl derivative has never been prepared, the methodology is correct and I considers that the article is suitable of publication after minor modifications:

1.  Reaction yield has to be included in scheme 1.

2. Since the authors number the atoms of compound 1 in Figure 1, then an NMR assignment could be useful.

3. The catalytic part is not too interesting, in addition it does not provide a great improvement with respect to the previous results, I think it would be much more useful to include a UV / vis spectra and, if possible, a fluorescence emission spectrum.

Minor details:

L40, Terpyridine 1, 1 must be in bold

L50, again L81 to L85 J must be in italics

Author Response

Thank you for your critical reading of the manuscript.

The typographical errors have been corrected. The UV-Vis spectra of the compound have been recorded. Experimental section and supplementary material have been updated consequently.

Kind regards.