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Complexes of Carbon Monoxide and Its Relatives: An Organometallic Family Celebrates Its Birthday
Author(s) -
Werner Helmut
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition in english
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 0570-0833
DOI - 10.1002/anie.199010773
Subject(s) - organometallic chemistry , hundredth , carbon monoxide , chemistry , reactivity (psychology) , transition metal , organic chemistry , catalysis , medicine , alternative medicine , arithmetic , mathematics , pathology
Nickel tetracarbonyl was discovered one hundred years ago. Its hundredth birthday deserves to be celebrated not only by metal carbonyl chemists. The pioneering work of Mond, Langer , and Quincke has led to developments which, particularly in the last 30 years, have had consequences in many areas outside that of metal carbonyl chemistry. The parent ligand of the family, CO, has been joined by a series of relatives which are isoelectronic with it and which in some cases are even more effective as π acceptors. These are in the main extremely reactive molecules such as CS, CNH, and C= CH 2 , which, though very short‐lived in the free state, form very stable complexes with transition metals. This article documents the family relationships by structure and reactivity comparisons; attention is also drawn to the synthetic potential of the metal carbonyl analogues, which is still virtually untapped. The final section ventures a look towards the next 100 years, which promise to be just as exciting as the past century.