Several control experiments were conducted to probe possible mechanism. Firstly, we found that the MnBr
2 catalyzed oxidative Mizoroki-Heck type reaction was inhibited by the addition of radical trapping agent 2, 2, 6, 6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO), and compound
6 was detected by HRMS (
Scheme 4a). Therefore, radical process is likely involved in current reaction. The detection of compound
7 (
Scheme 4a) and homo-coupling product
8 in the reaction of
2a under standard condition (
Scheme 4b) led us to consider the possibility of the radical-radical coupling between allyl radical and ketyl radical (for details, see Supporting information). However, the deuterium-incorporation experiment did not support this possibility because compound
3q-d2 was isolated in 51% yield, when compound
2q-d3 was used as the substrate (
Scheme 4c). There was no deuterium-incorporation in the allylic position of compound
3q-d2 (
Scheme 4c)
. Moreover, competitive reaction between
2q and
2q-d3 showed that KIE was 1.04, which implied the deprotonation-elimination process was not the rate-determining step (
Scheme 4d) [
52]. We have shown that Mn(Ⅱ) catalyst is important for the success of the reaction (
Table 1, entry 12). Further investigation indicates that bromide ion is also crucial (
Scheme 4e). We found that when Mn(OAc)
2 was used as the catalyst, no product
3a was generated although the organosilicon reagent was consumed in about 20%. However, the addition of LiBr (10 mol%) led to the formation of compound
3a in 35% yield, while Mn(OAc)
2 (5 mol%) was used as the catalyst. Similar trend was found for the catalysis with MnSO
4·H
2O (without LiBr, 0% yield of
3a, 10% conversion of
1b; with 10 mol% LiBr, 30% yield of
3a, 75% conversion of
1b). While there is 21% yield of
3a formed when MnCl
2·4H
2O was employed as the catalyst, the addition of LiBr also significantly increased the efficiency of the reaction (69% yield of
3a, 100% conversion of
1b). Allylic bromide was ruled out as the intermediate in the present protocol because no product
3a was detected when
9 was added to the reaction (
Scheme 4f).