Reaction Mechanisms in Carbonylation Chemistry

Abstract

The “mechanism” of a homogeneous catalytic reaction can be viewed at two levels. First, one may identify a series of relatively stable, though not necessarily isolable, metal complexes whose sequential interconversion leads to a cyclic and therefore catalytic process. This is the level at which reaction mechanisms are most often treated in the present book. At the same time, each “elementary reaction” such as oxidative addition or reductive elimination must obviously have its own intimate mechanism, but the details for many catalytic processes are still controversial, and discussion at this level is therefore restricted to Section 2.5, where the elementary reactions themselves are described.