Ruthenium-based heterocyclic carbene-coordinated olefin metathesis catalysts.

The fascinating story of olefin (or alkene) metathesis (eq 1) began almost five decades ago, when Anderson and Merckling reported the first carbon-carbon double-bond rearrangement reaction in the titanium-catalyzed polymerization of norbornene.1 Nine years later, Banks and Bailey reported “a new disproportionation reaction . . . in which olefins are converted to homologues of shorter and longer carbon chains . . .”.2 In 1967, Calderon and co-workers named this metal-catalyzed redistribution of carbon-carbon double bonds olefin metathesis, from the Greek word “μετŔθεση”, which means change of position.3 These contributions have since served as the foundation for an amazing research field, and olefin metathesis currently represents a powerful transformation in chemical synthesis, attracting a vast amount of interest both in industry and academia.4-6