Comparative investigation of ruthenium-based metathesis catalysts bearing N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands

Exchange of one PCy3 unit of the classical Grubbs catalyst 1 by N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands leads to "second-generation" metathesis catalysts of superior reactivity and increased stability. Several complexes of this type have been prepared and fully characterized, six of them by X-ray crystallography. These include the unique chelate complexes 13 and 14 in which the NHC- and the Ru-CR entities are tethered to form a metallacycle. A particularly favorable design feature is that the reactivity of such catalysts can be easily adjusted by changing the electronic and steric properties of the NHC ligands. The catalytic activity also strongly depends on the solvent used; NMR investigations provide a tentative explanation of this effect. Applications of the "second-generation" catalysts to ring closing alkene metathesis and intramolecular enyne cycloisomerization reactions provide insights into their catalytic performance. From these comparative studies it is deduced that no single catalyst is optimal for different types of applications. The search for the most reactive catalyst for a specific transformation is facilitated by IR thermography allowing a rapid and semi-quantitative ranking among a given set of catalysts.     

A study of molecular one-electron properties in terms of localized molecular orbital components

A number of molecular one-electron progperties have been analyzed by partitioning their electronic components over energy localized molecular orbitals (LMO ). The ammonia and ethane molecules, calculated in an Approximately double zeta qualtiy basis set, were considered. The partitioning of the electronic components of certain one-electron properteies over LMO allows a quantitative rationalization of the sensitivity of certain properties to basis set effects due to the differeing degree of difficulty of accurately determining different LMO as measures of the molecular electron density.