Introduction to the organometallic chemistry of transition metals. The metal-carbon bond. Organometallic compounds: characteristics, ligands, structures, formalisms, properties. The main families of organometallic compounds.
Stoichiometric reactions of organometallic compounds
Redox reactions: inner-sphere and outer-sphere reactions; oxidative addition and reductive elimination.
Metathesis reactions.
Reactions of coordinated ligands. Reactions of complexes with electrophiles and nucleophiles.
Ligand substitution reactions.
Insertion and elimination reactions.
Characterization of organometallic compounds
Instrumental methods of analysis of organometallic compounds: NMR, IR and UV spectroscopies. Crystallography. NMR spectroscopy in organometallic chemistry: NMR active nuclei, shielding constants, chemical shift, spin-spin coupling and signal multiplicity. Isotopic abundance and satellites. Chemical and magnetic equivalence. Homotopic, enantiotopic and diastereotopic nuclei.
Chirality in inorganic and organometallic chemistry. Study and characterization of chiral complexes.
Characterization of organometallic compounds. Hetereronuclear NMR. Advanced NMR techniques.
Fluxionality of transition metal organometallic complexes. Time scale of instrumental techniques. IR and NMR spectra of fluxional species.
Applications of organometallic compounds
Principles and applications of homogeneous catalysis. Fundamental steps and catalytic cycles. Asymmetric catalysis.
Most important processes in homogeneous catalysis, e.g. hydrogenation, carbonilation and hydroformylation, oligomerization and polymerization, coupling reactions, alkenes metathesis.
Other applications. Frontiers of organometallic chemistry.