Ruthenium arenes bifunctional

Fig. 12. (a) General structure of the half-sandwich, piano-stool ruthenium—arene complexes (b) X and Y are commonly occupied by a bidentate ligand L giving a monofunctional complex (c) tethering of a monodentate ligand to the arene results in a bifunctional complex. 

The bifunctional amine-tethered ruthenium(II) arene complexes [Ru(r6 ti1-C6H5CH2(CH2)i1NH2)C12] (n = 1,2) (13a,b) show two consecutive hydrolysis steps to yield the mono- and bis-aqua complexes (64). At extracellular chloride concentrations, the majority of the complexes could be expected to be present as the mono-aqua adduct. Equilibrium constants were determined for both steps (for 13b, Ki = 145 mM K2 = 5.4 mM) and found to be considerably higher than those of cisplatin, which also has two reactive sites available. 

Melchart M, Habtemariam A, Novakova O, Moggach SA, Fabbiani FPA, Parsons S, Brabec V, Sadler PJ (2007) Bifunctional amine-tethered ruthenium(II) arene complexes form monofunctional adducts on DNA. Inorg Chem 46 8950-8962... 

Other chiral diamine-( -arene)ruthenium catalysts were developed by Noyori where the chirality was centred at the metal (see Figure 3.18). These complexes were effective catalysts for asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of carbonyl compounds and a mechanism involving a metal-ligand bifunctional process was proposed. 

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