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Updated: Jul 17, 2025

Synthesis of a Water-soluble Metal–Organic Complex Array
Published on: October 8, 2016
Carbon-Bonding Metal Catalysis (CBMC): A Supramolecular Complex Directs Structural-Isomer Selection in Gold-Catalyzed
Xinxin Li1, Lingfei Hu1, Gang Lu1
1School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface Chemistry of the Ministry of Education, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Carbon is a primary element to constitute organic molecules, while metal catalysis is a basic tool in organic synthesis. The establishment of a link between the ubiquitous carbon bonding and metal catalysis is thus a fundamentally important problem. However, there is yet no experimental example to introduce the role of carbon bonding in a metal catalysis process. Herein, we merged the topics of carbon bonding and metal catalysis together and demonstrated that a supramolecular carbon-bonding metal complex can not only give rise to catalytic activity but, more remarkably, direct structural-isomer selection events in gold-catalyzed reactions. The experimental results unveil the fact that the imposing of weak carbon-bonding interactions on a gold complex can alter the carbene as well as the Lewis acid property of these catalysts. These results illustrate a non-negligible role of weak carbon-bonding interactions in the modulation of metal catalysis. As such, carbon-bonding metal catalysis is suggested to be used as a routine tool not only in the development of reactions but more frequently in analyzing reaction processes in metal catalysis.
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