Heterogenation of a shiff base substituted Grubbs catalyst and a Ru-dimer to perform romp reactions

The investigation of hybrid catalysts has been driven by the vision of combining the positive aspects of a homogeneous catalyst (i.e. site homogeneity, high activity per site, high selectivity and reproducibility) with those of heterogeneous catalysts (long life time, ease of separation, continuous operation). With the invention of MCM mesoporous silica, a new generation of improved supports for covalent binding of complexes became available. Such silica's not only show regular mesopores with variable size but also have very reactive intraparticle siloxane bridges and silanol groups for covalent linking of metal complexes. The reaction of the intraparticle surface of mesoporous silica with organosilicon spacers has recently proven to be a very flexible surface functionalisation technique. Here we present the immobilisation of [RuCl2(p-cymene)](2) on phosphine modified MCM-41 and of a Shiff base substituted Grubbs catalyst on MCM-41. Besides the synthesis and characterisation of the catalysts, results on ROMP reactions are presented.