Microsoft Word - abstract.docx

Metal–metal bonds have been an interesting topic for many decades due to the fundamental studies in bonding properties, as well as potential applications in small molecule activation processes. Much of what is known about this area is mainly based on 2 and 3 row transitional metals. Understanding of the bonding behavior between first-row transition metals, however, is lacking due to the synthetic challenges caused by smaller sizes of their d orbitals. Recently, the three-fold symmetric frameworks have been used to explore the fundamental aspects of first-row metal-metal bonding. For homobimetallic systems, it was found that the extent of metal-metal bonding is highly dependent on the participating metals. On the other hand, Lu and their coworkers developed synthetic strategies to construct a series of first-row heterobimetalic complexes. The periodic trends in metal-metal bonding were further explored. In addition, using dicobalt complexes for small molecule activation is addressed by the study of reductive silylation of N2.