Chromium complexes with olefins

Nickel and palladium react with a number of olefins other than ethylene, to afford a wide range of binary complexes. With styrene (11), Ni atoms react at 77 K to form tris(styrene)Ni(0), a red-brown solid that decomposes at -20 °C. The ability of nickel atoms to coordinate three olefins with a bulky phenyl substituent illustrates that the steric and electronic effects (54,141) responsible for the stability of a tris (planar) coordination are not sufficiently great to preclude formation of a tris complex rather than a bis (olefin) species as the highest-stoichiometry complex. In contrast to the nickel-atom reaction, chromium atoms react (11) with styrene, to form both polystyrene and an intractable material in which chromium is bonded to polystyrene. It would be interesting to ascertain whether such a polymeric material might have any catal3dic activity, in view of the current interest in polymer-sup-ported catalysts (51). 

The first metal-olefin complex was reported in 1827 by Zeise, but, until a few years ago, only palladium(II), platinum(Il), copper(I), silver(I), and mercury(II) were known to form such complexes (67, 188) and the nature of the bonding was not satisfactorily explained until 1951. However, recent work has shown that complexes of unsaturated hydrocarbons with metals of the vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, and cobalt subgroups can be prepared when the metals are stabilized in a low-valent state by ligands such as carbon monoxide and the cyclopentadienyl anion. The wide variety of hydrocarbons which form complexes includes olefins, conjugated and nonconjugated polyolefins, cyclic polyolefins, and acetylenes. 

The ease with which olefins form complexes with metals naturally led to investigation of acetylenes as ligands but until recent years only a few ill-defined, unstable acetylene complexes of copper and silver were known. Now complexes of acetylenes with metals of the chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, and copper subgroups are known. These complexes fall naturally into two classes—those in which the structure of the acetylene is essentially retained and those in which the acetylene is changed into another ligand during complex formation. Complexes of the first class are discussed here and the second class is discussed in Section VI. 

Both conjugated and nonconjugated olefins form complexes with the transition-metal carbonyls. Despite the fact that the first known complex, Zeises salt K(PtC2H4Cl3), discovered in 1827, was that of a simple olefin, complexes of monoolefins are rather limited in number. However, nonconjugated diolefins (L) react with group-VI carbonyls to form complexes of the type LM(CO)4 an example is provided by tetracarbonyl-bicyclo-(2,2, l)hepta-2,5-diene chromium (2) (Fig. 1). In contrast, the iron carbonyls... 

An aggravating phenomenon associated with the (salen)Mn complexes is that the epoxidation of /ram-olefins proceeds typically with low ee s. Remarkably, however, the analogous chromium complexes (e.g., 14) catalyze such epoxidations with greater selectivity than for the corresponding d.v-olefins under the same conditions. Here the mechanism is presumed to involve an electrophilic process, which is supported by the fact that only electron-rich alkenes are effectively epoxidized. In the case of ram-l.l-methy 1-styrcnc (15), enantioselectivities of ca. 80% are observed [95TL7739],... 

Nowadays, it is an accepted mechanistic model [5, 6] that the photolysis step (which proceeds under thermo-reversible CO insertion) leads to species best described as chromium ketene complexes of type 7 (Scheme 2). Indeed, these intermediates exhibit a ketene-like reactivity they undergo [2 + 2] cycloaddition reactions with olefins, imines and enol ethers, whereas reaction with nucleophiles leads to carboxylic acid derivatives. 

Reactions of hydroperoxides with oleflns in the presence of a variety of other metal centers have also been investigated. Hydrogen peroxide epoxidizes olefins as well in the presence of oxy compounds of W, Mo, V, Os, Ti, Zr, Th, Nb, Ta, Cr and Ru [411-422]. Although CrOa-oxidation of oleflns has been shown to give epoxides [423-425], chromium complexes such as [Cr(acac)a] are not particularly effective epoxidation catalysts at elevated temperatures [426]. It has recently been shown [427] that OSO4 is an effective catalyst for the hydroxylation of oleflns by tert-butyl hydroperoxide in base equation (268). 

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