Highly Active and Robust Ruthenium Complexes Based on Hemilability of Hybrid Ligands for C–H Oxidation

Evaluation of the hemilability of hybrid ligands provides a key to understand the metal–ligand cooperation in transition metal catalysis. Here, we design and synthesize a type of RuII complexes based on the hemilability of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs), pyridine, and pyrazole, to compare their activity with other reported Ru catalysts in benzylic C–H oxidation. The RuII catalysts showed ultrastrong catalytic activity in water at room...