2) Functional Ligands, Hemilability, Metal Complexes and Applications
The development of new polytopic phosphorus ligands and of their metal complexes has led to studies involving selective metal coordination, dynamic and hemilabile behaviour, chirality (Ru, Rh, Pd, Pt,..). In addition to the fundamental aspects of this research, applications to the reversible coordination of small molecules (e.g. CO, CO₂) and to homogeneous catalysis (hydrogenation-transfer, hydroformylation) have been reported.
Furthermore, phosphino-enolate complexes have revealed versatile applications in homogeneous catalysis: catalytic telomerization of CO₂ and butadiene (Pd), ethylene oligomerisation (Ni), alcane activation (Rh) and hydrogenation-transfer (Ru).
Using silicon ligands in bimetallic chemistry has resulted in numerous, unexpected developments, including the discovery of the hemilabile behaviour of alkoxysilyl ligands, new metal-silylene complexes, the migration of silyl groups from one metal to another and catalytic applications to the dehydrogenative coupling of stannanes, the co-oligomerisation olefins/CO and to sol-gel chemistry.

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