Facile activation of small molecules at a single carbon center

ORGN 758

Guido D. Frey, guido@ucr.edu, Bruno Donnadieu, Wolfgang W. Schoeller, and Guy Bertrand. Department of Chemistry, University of California Riverside, UCR/CNRS Joint Research Laboratory, UMR 2282, Riverside, CA 92521-0403
Thanks to their lone pair of electrons and accessible vacant orbital, singlet carbenes resemble, at least to some extent, transition metal centers, and thus are potentially able to mimic their chemical behavior. Here it is shown that carbenes can operate as single site molecules for the activation of small molecules under extremely mild conditions. However, mechanistically transition metals and these carbenes differ significantly in the way in which they activate small molecules.

References:

G.D. Frey, V. Lavallo, B. Donnadieu, W.W. Schoeller, G. Bertrand, Science 2007, in press.