Ligands donor group variation

Since carbohydrates constitute an inexpensive and highly modular chiral source for preparing chiral ligands," Claver et al. have reported the use of a series of thioether-phosphite" and thioether-phosphinite furanoside ligands" in the test palladium-catalysed allylic substitution reaction. In the first type of ligand, a systematic variation of the donor group attached to the carbon atom C5 indicated that the presence of a bulky phosphite functionality had a positive effect on the enantioselectivity. Indeed, the enantioselectivity was controlled mainly by the phosphite moiety. This was confirmed by the use of a ligand... 

Ru—C(carbene) bond distances are shorter than Ru—P bond lengths, but this can simply be explained by the difference in covalent radii between P and The variation of Ru—C(carbene) bond distances among ruthenium carbene complexes illustrates that nucleophilic carbene ligands are better donors when alkyl, instead of aryl, groups are present, with the exception of 6. This anomaly can be explained on the basis of large steric demands of the adamantyl groups on the imidazole framework which hinder the carbene lone pair overlap with metal orbitals. Comparison of the Ru—C(carbene) bond distances among the aryl-substituted carbenes show... 

N-heterocyclic compounds containing six-membered rings (pyridine and analogues) behave as excellent -acceptors and in turn they provide a rather soft site for metal ion coordination. The 7r-excessive five-membered pyrazole is a poorer 7r-acceptor and a better 7r-donor and it acts as relatively hard donor site. Inclusion of six- and five-membered N-heterocycles like pyridine and pyrazole in one ligand system leads to very attractive coordination chemistry with variations of the electronic properties.555 The insertion of a spacer (e.g., methylene groups) between two heterocycles, which breaks any electronic communication, makes the coordination properties even more manifold. 

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