carbon-hydrogen-transition metal bonds.pdfVIP

395 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 250 (1983) 395408 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., tausanne - Printed in The Netherlands CARBON-HYDROGEN-TRANSITION METAL BONDS MAURICE BROOKHART l and MALCOLM L.H. GREEN Inorganic Chemistry Loboratoty, South Parks Rod Oxford OXI 3QR (Great Britain) (Received December 17th. 1982) Summary Evidence that carbon-hydrogen bonds may act as ligands to transition metal centres forming covalent C-H-M systems in which, formally, the C-H group donates two electrons to the metal is reviewed and consequences are discussed. Introduction Carbon-hydrogen bonds, especially those of saturated (s$) carbon centres, are normally regarded as being chemically inert. Generally, the C-H group is not thought of as a potential ligand which can have a structural role or play an energetically significant part in ground states or in reaction intermediates. In this article we review recent observations which show that there are in fact many circumstances in which a carbon-hydrogen group will interact with a transi- tion metal centre with formation of a two-electron three-centre bond and that the extent of the interaction is such as to have a marked effect on the molecular and electronic structure and hence reactivity of the molecule. We propose the term “agostic” which will be used to discuss the various