The paper presents an overview of the work conducted in our group on the
synthesis of a novel class of homogeneous and immobilized Ru-complexes containing
Schiff bases as O, N-bidentate ligands benefiting from a versatile, quite general and
thoroughly exemplified two-step procedure. The new Ru-complexes with improved
stability incorporate a variety of Schiff bases, associated with traditional inorganic and
organic ligands such as chloride, phosphanes, arenes, cyclodienes, NHC etc., and different
carbenes (alkylidene, vinylidene, allenylidene and indenylidene). By a proper choice of the
Schiff base, useful physical and chemical properties of the derived Ru-complexes could be
induced resulting in tunable catalytic activity for metathesis and related processes. A
pertinent example is the latency of selected Schiff base Ru catalysts which by becoming
active only under specific conditions (heat or acid activation) are ideal for industrial
applications, e.g. reaction injection molding processes. The synthetic approaches that are
critically discussed in this chapter have led to a diversity of Ru-complexes of which several
members have risen to the rank of commercial catalysts.
Keywords: Organometallic chemistry, ruthenium, ruthenium carbenes, ruthenium
vinylidenes, ruthenium allenylidenes, ruthenium indenylidenes, ruthenium arenes,
ruthenium hydrides, schiff base ligands, homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous
catalysis, olefin metathesis, ring closing metathesis, ring opening metathesis, cross
metathesis, latent catalyst, kharash addition, atom transfer radical polymerization,
isomerization, vinyl ester synthesis.
