Research report 2008 - Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung

Not (only) for the sake of economizing: iron instead of palladium!

Authors
Fürstner, Alois
Departments

Metallorganische Chemie (Prof. Dr. Alois Fürstner)
MPI für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr

Summary
At first glance, it is surprising that iron constitutes one of the few remaining niches in the periodic table, as far as applications in homogeneous catalysis are concerned, since iron compounds are cheap, readily available, non-toxic and benign. This void is caused, to a large extent, by the lack of understanding of and control over the organometallic chemistry of this metal. Recent years, however, have seen important advances in this field, most notably in the area of cross coupling, to which the Mülheim laboratories have made substantial contributions.

For the full text, see the German version.

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