Dihydrogen reductive elimination

E) Sigma-bond metathesis. Dihydrogen is observed to react with transition-metal-alkyl bonds even when the metal lacks lone pairs. In this case the reaction cannot be explained in terms of the oxidative-addition or reductive-elimination motif. Instead, we can view this reaction as a special type of insertion reaction whereby the ctmr bond pair takes the donor role of the metal lone pair and donates into the cthh antibond. When the M—R bonds are highly polarized as M+R, the process could also be described as a concerted electrophilic H2 activation in which R acts as the base accepting H+. 

From all the above observations, it was concluded that, for diphosphine chelate complexes, the hydrogenation stage occurs after alkene association thus, the unsaturated pathway depicted in Scheme 1.21 was proposed [31 a, c, 74]. The monohydrido-alkyl complex is formed by addition of dihydrogen to the en-amide complex, followed by transfer of a single hydride. Reductive elimination of the product regenerates the active catalysts and restarts the cycle. The monohydrido-alkyl intermediate was also observed and characterized spectroscopically [31c, 75], but the catalyst-substrate-dihydrido complex was not detected. 

The first step consists of the substitution of one of the ligands (L) of 18 by dioxane (39) in an oxidative addition (a) (Scheme 20.16). / -Elimination of 40 releases 2,3-dihydro-dioxine (41) and the 16-electron dihydrogen rhodium complex (42) (b). Alkene 43 coordinates to the vacant site of 42 (c) to give complex 44. A hydride insertion then takes place (d), affording complex 45. After a reductive elimination (e) of the product 46, the coordination of a ligand reconstitutes the Wilkinson-type catalyst (18). 

As briefly discussed in section 1.1, and shown in Figure 1, the accepted mechanism for the catalytic cycle of hydrogenation of C02 to formic add starts with the insertion of C02 into a metal-hydride bond. Then, there are two possible continuations. The first possibility is the reductive elimination of formic acid followed by the oxidative addition of dihydrogen molecule to the metal center. The second possible path goes through the a-bond metathesis of a metal formate complex with a dihydrogen molecule. In this section, we will review theoretical investigations on each of these elementary processes, with the exception of oxidative addition of H2 to the metal center, which has already been discussed in many reviews. 

As shown in Figure 1, the next step in the catalytic cycle of carbon dioxide hydrogenation is either reductive elimination of formic acid from the transition-metal formate hydride complex or CT-bond metathesis between the transition-metal formate complex and dihydrogen molecule. In this section, we will discuss the reductive elimination process. Activation barriers and reaction energies for different reactions of this type are collected in Table 3. 

Other, the dihydrogen bond is already broken and the unsaturated bond is weakened. Next, the unsaturated bond inserts into one of the Rh-H bonds and thus the first hydrogen is transferred to the product molecule. Transfer of the second hydrogen leads to reductive elimination of the product molecule and the catalyst is ready for the next cycle. 

Reductive elimination of dihydrogen may then take place to complete the catalytic cycle ... 

Table VI lists various ways in which the elimination of small molecules has been used to produce silicon-transition-metal bonds most can be pictured as proceeding via consecutive processes of oxidative addition and reductive elimination. Dihydrogen may result from reaction between compounds with M-H and Si-H bonds (entries 1-10).

Reductive elimination of dihydrogen occurs in entry 31, together with loss of PPh3, to give the usual five-coordination found for Cod) derivatives. 

Fig. 9. Binuclear reductive elimination. The dihydride complex, 20, passes over a low energy transition state to form a dihydrogen complex, 21. Relative energies given in kcal mol-1.

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