copper-free mechanism. While the copper-free mechanism has been shown to be viable, attempts to incorporate the various transition metals mentioned above as less expensive alternatives to palladium catalysts have shown a poor track record of success due to contamination of the reagents with trace amounts of palladium, suggesting that these theorized pathways are extremely unlikely, if not impossible, to achieve. Studies have shown that organic and inorganic starting materials can also contain enough (ppb level) palladium for the coupling. Gold and palladium co-catalysis A highly efficient gold and palladium combined methodology for the Sonogashira coupling of a wide array of electronically and structurally diverse aryl and heteroaryl halides has been reported. The orthogonal reactivity of the two metals shows high selectivity and extreme functional group tolerance in Sonogashira coupling. A brief mechanistic study reveals that the gold-acetylide intermediate enters into palladium catalytic cycle at the transmetalation step. Dendrimeric palladium complexes The issues dealing with recovery of the often expensive catalyst after product formation poses a serious drawback for large-scale applications of homogeneous catalysis. Structures known as metallodendrimers combine the advantages of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, as they are soluble and well defined on the molecular level, and yet they can be recovered by precipitation, ultrafiltration, or ultracentrifugation. Some recent examples can be found about the use of dendritic palladium complex catalysts for the copper-free Sonogashira reaction. Thus, several generations of bidentate phosphine palladium(II) polyamino dendritic catalysts have been used solubilized in triethylamine for the coupling of aryl iodides and bromides at 25-120 °C, and of aryl chlorides, but in very low yields. The dendrimeric catalysts could usually be recovered by simple precipitation and filtration and reused up to five times, with diminished activity produced by dendrimer decomposition and not by palladium leaching being observed. These dendrimeric catalysts showed a negative dendritic effect; that is, the catalyst efficiency decreases as the dendrimer generation increases. A recyclable polymeric phosphine ligand is obtained from ring-opening metathesis polymerization of a norbornene derivative, and has been used in the copper co-catalyzed Sonogashira reaction of methyl p-iodobenzoate and phenylacetylene using as a palladium source. Despite recovery by filtration, polymer catalytic activity decreased by approximately 4-8% in each recycle experiment. Nitrogen ligands Pyridines and pyrimidines have shown good complexation properties for palladium and have been employed in the formation of catalysts suitable for Sonogashira couplings. The dipyrimidyl-palladium complex shown below has been employed in the copper-free coupling