Ruthenium-catalyzed ring-closing metathesis to form tetrasubstituted olefins.

[structure: see text]. Increased efficiency for ring-closing metathesis to form tetrasubstituted olefins using N-heterocyclic carbene ligated ruthenium catalysts was achieved by reducing the size of the substituents at the ortho positions of the N-bound aryl rings.

Accelerated arene ligand exchange in the (Arene)Cr(CO)2L series.

Arene ligand exchange in the (eta(6)-arene)Cr(CO)(2)L series can be accelerated if the ligand L is an electronically unsymmetrical bidentate ligand. The system evaluated here employs derivatives of tris(pyrrolyl)phosphine as L. A series of 2-L'-substituted pyrroles was prepared, where the substituents include: L' = -SMe, -CH(2)SMe, -SPh, -CH(2)SPh, -SCF(3), -S-tBu, -CO(2)Me, -CONMe(2), -2-pyridinyl, and -PPh(2). Reaction with ClP(pyrrolyl)(2) gave a new series of phosphines, (2-L'-pyrrolyl)(pyrrolyl)(2)P. Each of these phosphines was converted to (arene)Cr(CO)(2)[P(2-L'-pyrrolyl)(pyrrolyl)(2)P) complexes. The substituents L'are proposed to provide temporary coordination to the Cr and to lower the barrier to arene exchange. The series was evaluated where the arene in the complex (departing) is benzene, fluorobenzene, toluene, o-xylene, m-xylene, or p-xylene and the incoming arene is C(6)D(6), chlorobenzene-d(5), anisole-d(8), fluorobenzene-d(5), toluene-d(8), o-xylene-d(10), m-xylene-d(10), p-xylene-d(10), or mesitylene-d(12). Most of the new complexes showed a significant increase in the rate of arene exchange due to the side chain unit L'. The strongest effects were seen with the examples where X = -CO(2)Me, -CONMe(2), and -(2-pyridinyl), allowing exchange with a half lifetime as low as 8 h/22 degrees C.