Electronic Properties and Reactivity of an Isolable Phosphagermaheterocyclic Carbene

摘要

Carbenes have been considered for a long time as unstable intermediates until the pioneering work of Bertrand and coworkers with the isolation of a stable noncyclic push-pull carbene and of Arduengo and co-workers with the isolation of an N-heterocyclic push-push carbene (NHC). Today, stable carbenes, particularly NHCs, govern a large part of modern chemistry, especially in coordination chemistry with many applications: first of all in the field of catalysis, where NHCs successfully replace phosphines, but also in medical chemistry, in nanoscience, and in the development of new luminescent compounds, where their role is also dramatically increasing.