Ruthenium Vinylidene Complexes

This paper surveys an attractive family of ruthenium complexes with great potential for applications in organic and polymer synthesis. When compared with traditional ruthenium alkylidene pre-catalysts, these alternative ruthenium vinylidene complexes are easily accessible from commercial starting materials. In addition, they display moderate to high metathesis activity and stability, and exhibit good tolerance towards an array of functional groups, air and moisture. Their synthesis, physical-chemical properties and catalytic attributes indicate they are quite promising initiators of efficient applications in ring-closing metathesis, cross metathesis and ring-opening metathesis polymerisation.