N-Heterocyclic Carbenes; Synthesis, Activity and Reactivity

Metal-N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes have found broad application in catalysis and, more recently, are showing promise in biomedical applications. Synthetic methods to prepare metal-NHCs generally rely on those first reported in the 1960s, using strong bases and strict inert conditions, or forming stoichiometric quantities of metal salt. During this talk I will discuss a synthetic method to metal-NHC complexes which relies on electrochemistry, and how this new methodology has been translated into flow technology. During our work with copper-NHC complexes we have observed unusual non-innocent behaviour of the NHC ligand. This unconventional behaviour is likely to lead to catalyst decomposition for these types of complexes, with a detailed mechanistic understanding enabling a knowledge-based approach to the design of more efficient ligands. I will also discuss some of the work that we have carried out on new ligand architectures, which fuse NHCs with another well-established though very different ligand type, namely carboranes.