Overview

N-Heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) are of much recent interest and their complexes well known. To date, countless reports on complexes of almost every transition metal derived from NHCs have appeared, together with reports of their catalytic activities, mostly in coupling reactions. This project is focused on a particular class of NHCs where imidazolium-based carbenes constitute part of a cyclophane structure. Although numerous examples of NHC-transition metal complexes exist, reports of NHC-metal complexes derived from imidazolium-linked cyclophanes are rare. This book describes the synthesis and isolation of silver, mercury, ruthenium and palladium complexes of bidentate NHCs, derived from imidazolium-linked cyclophanes and related bis-imidazolium salts. The complexes have been characterised by NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography. This book presents some new compounds, reactions and synthetic routes to NHC-metal chemistry that should be useful and of interests especially to students and researchers involved in organometallic synthesis.