Unsaturated versus saturated hydrocarbons

The complementary approach, activation of unsaturated hydrocarbons toward electrophilic attack by complexation with electron-rich metal fragments, has seen limited investigation. Although there are certainly opportunities in this area which have not been exploited, the electrophilic reactions present a more complex problem relative to nucleophilic addition. For example, consider the nucleophilic versus electrophilic addition to a terminal carbon of a saturated 18-electron metal-diene complex. Nucleophilic addition generates a stable 18-electron saturated ir-allyl complex. In contrast, electrophilic addition at carbon results in removal of two valence electrons from the metal and formation of an unstable ir-allyl unsaturated 16-electron complex (Scheme 1). 

Fiereby, Vq refers to the maximal electronic coupling element and p is the decay coefficient factor (damping factor), which depends primarily on the nature of the bridging molecule. From the linear plot of In ETmax versus R the p value is obtained as 0.60 A [47]. This p value is located within the boundaries of nonadiabatic ET reactions for saturated hydrocarbon bridges (0.8-1.0 A ) and unsaturated phenylene bridges (0.4 A ) [1-4,54,55]. 

Multimetallic sandwiches, including polymetallocenes, bis(fulvalene)-dimetal compounds, multi-decker sandwiches, and compounds in which two metals are bonded to a common unsaturated cyclic hydrocarbon are discussed in Section II. Sections III and IV are subdivided according to the metal group, and describe ligand-bridged bimetallics and metal clusters, respectively. Where appropriate, redox potentials have been included. Unless otherwise stated they are referenced versus the aqueous saturated calomel electrode (see). 

Figure 3 shows the partial pressure of each product versus time for the hydrogenation of prenal in tlte standard conditions. Throughout the reaction, the fractions of unsaturated alcohol (prenol), saturated aldehyde (Lsovaleraldehyde) and saturated alcohol (isoamylic alcohol) remain small (lower than 5%) the Light products, identified as C4 and C5 hydrocarbons, are by far in majority and more than 15% at the end of the reaction. The C4/C5 ratio is between 1 and 2. It may be added that the selectivity does not vary considerably with conversion. 

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