Computational study of productive and non-productive cycles in fluoroalkene metathesis

• Markéta Rybáčková,
• Jan Hošek,
• Ondřej Šimůnek,
• Viola Kolaříková and
• Jaroslav Kvíčala

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2015, 11, 2150–2157, doi:10.3762/bjoc.11.232

• . Keywords: alkene metathesis; computation; DFT; fluoroalkene; mechanism; non-productive cycle; productive cycle; Introduction Over the course of the last 20 years, alkene metathesis catalysed with homogeneous transitition metal-based precatalysts evolved into a valuable tool for organic synthetic chemists

• catalytic cycle closing the ring into the ruthenacyclobutane PB, or it can react in the non-productive cycle forming symmetrical ruthenacyclobutane NB. Finishing the productive cycle, the ruthenacyclobutane PB releases ethene and starts the next catalytic cycle, while the non-productive complex NB can again

• continued our study by the computation of the first step A of the catalytic cycle for 1,1-difluoroethene (2), which started with the coordination of the starting active catalytic form 2AC with 1,1-difluoroethene (2). The non-productive cycle started with the syn-coordination of 1,1-difluoroethene (2) to 1,1