Olefin Metathesis Catalysis and Ring-Opening Polymerization
This community develops metal-catalyzed reactions that rearrange carbon-carbon double bonds, primarily to build complex organic molecules and synthesize specialized polymers.
The work centers on designing ruthenium and molybdenum-based catalysts, specifically heterocyclic carbene complexes, to drive olefin metathesis. Key applications include ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) for creating cyclic olefin polymers, cross-metathesis for molecular assembly, and carbonyl-olefin metathesis. The research also covers total synthesis of natural products and the development of degradable, chemically recyclable polyolefins. Recurring methods involve tuning steric and electronic properties of catalysts to control selectivity and activity in both small-molecule synthesis and polymerization processes.
The largest share of the community's output is found in ruthenium research, accounting for 3.5% of all ruthenium studies, with 2,682 papers in this group. Molybdenum and tungsten also appear frequently, contributing 828 and 988 papers respectively, reflecting the use of these metals in catalyst design.
The community comprises 14,032 papers, published most frequently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organometallics, and Tetrahedron Letters.
Recent work focuses on strain-driven ring-opening metathesis polymerization, the design of depolymerizable polyolefins from strained bicyclic monomers, and the use of machine learning to predict ring strain energies for strain-promoted reactions.