Recent developments in homobimetallic reagents and catalysts for organic synthesis

Organometallics are a family of useful organic chemicals because they play important roles in organic synthesis as reagents and as catalysts. They can be classified according to the number of metals they contain. Bimetallic compounds are important organometallics and they are either homobimetallic or heterobimetallic depending on whether the two metals are the same or different. In this paper, we focus on homobimetallic compounds. Homobimetallic compounds are generally used as dianions to react with electrophiles in organic synthesis. Recently, homobimetallics have also been used as catalysts in organic reactions such as in asymmetric reactions.