Ditopic ligands comprising an anionic NO or NN moiety (shown in blue and gray) and a phosphine moiety (orange) can be assembled with hard metals such as zinc(II) (green) to form bidentate phosphine ligands. This approach led to a rhodium catalysts for the selective hydroformylation of 1-octene with linear-to-branched ratios up to 21:1 and rates comparable to covalently bound wide-bite-angle diphosphine ligands.
![Catalysis by design: Wide-bite-angle diphosphines by assembly of ditopic ligands for selective rhodium-catalyzed hydroformylation](https://www.iciq.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Catalysis-by-design-Wide_eng_noticies_articles_2007_104.gif)