Ruthenium(II) carbonyl complexes bearing quinoline-based NNO tridentate ligands as catalyst for one-pot conversion of aldehydes to amides and o-allylation of phenols

Six new octahedral ruthenium(II) carbonyl complexes having the general molecular formula [RuCl(CO)(B)L(1-2)] (B = PPh3, AsPh3 or py; L(1-2) = quinoline based NNO ligand) were synthesized. The quinoline based ligands behave as monoanionic tridentate donor and coordinated to ruthenium via ketoenolate oxygen, azomethine nitrogen and quinoline nitrogen. The composition of the complexes has been established by elemental analysis and spectral methods (FT-IR, electronic, (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR, (31)P NMR and ESI-Mass). The complexes were used as efficient catalysts for one-pot conversion of various aldehydes to their corresponding primary amides in presence of NH2OH · HCl and NaHCO3. The effect of catalyst loading and reaction temperature on catalytic activity of the ruthenium(II) carbonyl complexes were also investigated. The synthesized complexes also possess good catalytic activity for the o-allylation of phenols in the presence of K2CO3 under mild conditions. The complexes afforded branched allyl aryl ethers according to a regioselective reaction.

Farewell to the HSAB treatment of ambident reactivity

The concept of hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) proved to be useful for rationalizing stability constants of metal complexes. Its application to organic reactions, particularly ambident reactivity, has led to exotic blossoms. By attempting to rationalize all the observed regioselectivities by favorable soft-soft and hard-hard as well as unfavorable hard-soft interactions, older treatments of ambident reactivity, which correctly differentiated between thermodynamic and kinetic control as well as between different coordination states of ionic substrates, have been replaced. By ignoring conflicting experimental results and even referring to untraceable experimental data, the HSAB treatment of ambident reactivity has gained undeserved popularity. In this Review we demonstrate that the HSAB as well as the related Klopman-Salem model do not even correctly predict the behavior of the prototypes of ambident nucleophiles and, therefore, are rather misleading instead of useful guides. An alternative treatment of ambident reactivity based on Marcus theory will be presented.