Transition metal complexes with polydentate pi-accepting ligands

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The Natural Sciences are a critical part of the research and development occurring in Canada.  This research program is unique and contributes to research in chemistry. Since Werner's seminal work on the theory of coordination chemistry, thousands of new coordination compounds and their respective structures, bonding and reactivity have been described.  An inorganic coordination compound requires a metal atom or ion and one or more ligands. Changing either the metal or the ligand can have dramatic effects on the chemical nature of the resulting product and has yielded coordination compounds that have opened new research areas such as organometallic chemistry and bioinorganic chemistry as well applications in materials, catalysis and organic methodology. Ligands are crucial in determining the electronic environment at the metal centre and can be used to create Lewis acidity in a metal complex. One very effective way this can be done is by accepting electron density from filled metal d-orbitals via an available Pi acceptor-orbital on the ligand. Monomeric ligands possessing Pi-accepting properties are readily available (e.g. CO, NO) and are known to result in Lewis acidic transition metal complexes. Polydentate ligands of this nature are relatively rare and offer a significant field of chemistry that remains largely unexplored. In this research program we intend to synthesize ligands with Pi-accepting functional groups such as nitriles and isonitriles, coordinate these ligands to transition metal ions, and explore the applications of the resultant complexes to organic catalysis.