First-row metal catalysts for controlled radical reactivity

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With its goals of preventing pollution and reducing consumption of nonrenewable resources, green chemistry represents an important opportunity for synthetic inorganic chemists. There is a growing emphasis on developing catalysts that use readily-available transition metals, operate under mild conditions, and use reactants obtained from renewable resources. A critical frontier of green chemistry research is to discover earth-abundant first-row transition metal cross-coupling catalysts that break carbon-oxygen or carbon-hydrogen bonds instead of relying on halogenated reactants. This field is generally perceived as difficult due to the potential involvement of radical chemistry. The first-row metal complexes relevant to catalysis often have unpaired d-electrons. The catalysts are prone to single-electron reactions that can generate organic radicals, especially for reactions conducted under oxidative conditions. The organic molecules bound to the metal centers can themselves gain or lose single electrons, forming ligand-based radicals.