Ruthenium-Based Heterocyclic Carbene-Coordinated Olefin Metathesis Catalysts

The fascinating story of olefin (or alkene) metathesis (eq
\n1) began almost five decades ago, when Anderson and
\nMerckling reported the first carbon-carbon double-bond
\nrearrangement reaction in the titanium-catalyzed polymerization of norbornene. Nine years later, Banks and Bailey reported “a new disproportionation reaction . . . in which olefins are converted to homologues of shorter and longer carbon chains...”. In 1967, Calderon and co-workers named this metal-catalyzed redistribution of carbon-carbon double bonds olefin metathesis, from the Greek word “μετάθεση”, which means change of position. These contributions have since served as the foundation for an amazing research field, and olefin…