Catalysis by Design: Wide-Bite-Angle Diphosphines by Assembly of Ditopic Ligands for Selective Rhodium-Catalyzed Hydroformylation

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.