The Bridge between Organometallic Reagents and Mononuclear Heterocycles

Zhenqi Chai, and Wen-Xiong Zhang*

Organometallics 2022, 41, 3455–3477. (Review)

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00471

Dicarbanion compounds, namely organo-bi-metallics in which two metal atoms are separated by all-carbon backbones, are of great importance in organometallic chemistry for not only the interests in the structure but also the wide application in synthesis, especially of mononuclear heterocycles. The synthetic methods and reactivity of dicarbanion compounds highly depend on the type of metals as well as the structure of backbones. For metal types, while there are examples for other metals, lithium and magnesium play important roles in the chemistry of dicarbanion compounds. For backbone structure, different unsaturated bonds in the backbones result in different rigidity and orientation of carbon-metal bonds, thus have great impact on the reactivity of dicarbanion compounds. Herein, a general review on the preparation, structure and reactivity of dicarbanion compounds with different metals and backbones would be presented, mainly focusing on the dicarbanion compounds that have been or may potentially be employed in mononuclear heterocycle synthesis. Heterocycles mentioned in this review are mostly metallacycles because of the limitation of synthetic methods.