Open-shell iron hydrocarbyls

Open-shell iron hydrocarbyl species attract great interests in the recent years for their relevance to the key intermediates of many iron-catalyzed organic transformations, and also their rich electronic structures that might lead to unique physical properties. While a plenty of studies on open-shell iron hydrocarbyls are scattered in literature, pertinent review on the chemistry of this type of intriguing complexes is lacking. In this article, we summarize the synthetic methods, structure and spectroscopic features, as well as the established reactivity of open-shell iron hydrocarbyl complexes, particularly those with the coordination numbers less than five. As we shall see, while the preparation methods of open-shell iron hydrocarbyls parallel with those of their closed-shell analogs, the open-shell nature of this type of organo-iron species could endow them unique spectroscopic features and also reactivity. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.