A novel and efficient approach to the synthesis of 2-vinylbenzylamines is reported. This involves obtaining 2-vinylbenzylamine ligands from tetrahydroisoquinoline by alkylation and reduction followed by the Hofmann cleavage. The resultant 2-vinylbenzylamines allowed us to obtain new Hoveyda–Grubbs catalysts, which were thoroughly characterised by NMR, ESIMS, and X-ray crystallography. The utility of this chemistry is further demonstrated by the tests of the novel catalysts (up to 10−2 mol %) in different metathesis reactions such as cross metathesis (CM), ring-closing metathesis (RCM) and ring-opening cross metathesis (ROCM).

An efficient approach to the synthesis of new types of Hoveyda–Grubbs catalysts containing an N→Ru bond in a six-membered chelate ring is proposed. The synthesis of the organometallic compounds is based on the interaction of ready accessible 2-vinylbenzylamines and 1,3-bis­(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)-2-trichloromethylimidazolidine ligands with dichloro­(3-phenyl-1H-inden-1-ylidene)­bis­(tricyclohexylphosphane)­ruthenate, and it afforded the target ruthenium complexes in 70–80% yields. Areas of practical utility and potential applications of the obtained chelates were highlighted by tests of the catalysts in different olefin cross-metathesis (CM) and ring-closing-metathesis (RCM) reactions. These experiments revealed a high catalytic performance (up to 10–2 mol %) of all the synthesized structures in a broad temperature range. The structural peculiarities of the resultant ruthenium catalysts were thoroughly investigated by X-ray crystallography, which allowed making a reliable correlation between the structure of the metallo-complexes and their catalytic properties. It was proved that the bond length between ruthenium and nitrogen in the six-membered chelate ring has the greatest effect on the stability and efficiency of the catalyst. As a rule, the shorter and stronger the N→Ru bond, the higher the stability of the complex and the worse its catalytic characteristics. In turn, the coordination N→Ru bond length can be finely tuned and varied over a wide range of values by changing the steric volume of the cyclic substituents at the nitrogen atom, which will make it possible, as appropriate, to obtain in the future metal complexes with predictable stability and the required catalytic activity. Also, it was found that complexes in which the nitrogen atom is included in the morpholine or isoquinoline rings are the most efficient catalysts in this series. An attempt to establish a correlation between the N→Ru bond length and the 1H and 13C chemical shifts in the RuCH fragment has been made.

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The title compound, [RuCl2(C21H26N2)(C11H15N)], is an example of a new generation of N,N-dialkyl metallocomplex ruthenium catalysts with an N→Ru coordination bond as part of a six-membered chelate ring. The Ru atom has an Addison τ parameter of 0.234, which indicates a geometry intermediate between square-based pyramidal and trigonal–bipyramidal. The complex shows the usual trans arrangement of the two chloride ligands, with Ru—Cl bond lengths of 2.3397 (8) and 2.3476 (8) Å, and a Cl—Ru— Cl angle of 157.47 (3)°. The crystal structure features C—H...Cl, C—H...π and π–π stacking interactions. The solvent molecules were found to be highly disordered and their contribution to the scattering was removed with the SQUEEZE procedure in PLATON [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9–18], which indicated a solvent cavity of volume 1096 Å3 containing approximately 419 electrons. These solvent molecules are not considered in the given chemical formula and other crystal data.