Carbon-Bonding Metal Catalysis (CBMC): A Supramolecular Complex Directs Structural-Isomer Selection in Gold-Catalyzed Reactions.

Carbon is a primary element to constitute organic molecules, while metal catalysis is a basic tool in organic synthesis. The establishment of a link between the ubiquitous carbon bonding and metal catalysis is thus a fundamentally important problem. However, there is yet no experimental example to introduce the role of carbon bonding in a metal catalysis process. Herein, we merged the topics of carbon bonding and metal catalysis together and demonstrated that a supramolecular carbon-bonding metal complex can not only give rise to catalytic activity but, more remarkably, direct structural-isomer selection events in gold-catalyzed reactions. The experimental results unveil the fact that the imposing of weak carbon-bonding interactions on a gold complex can alter the carbene as well as the Lewis acid property of these catalysts. These results illustrate a non-negligible role of weak carbon-bonding interactions in the modulation of metal catalysis. As such, carbon-bonding metal catalysis is suggested to be used as a routine tool not only in the development of reactions but more frequently in analyzing reaction processes in metal catalysis.