Chirality in Transition Metal Chemistry: Molecules, Supramolecular Assemblies and Materials

Book Preface

This book deals with chirality in transition metal chemistry. Chirality is an ever-fascinating topic and is afield which occurs in various subjects of modern chemistry. Surprisingly, a check of the literature for textbooks on the topic yielded a series of titles that only partially covered the subject. To our knowledge Stereochemistry of Coordination Compounds, by Professor Alex von Zelewsky, is the only recent book which gives a specialized treatment of this subject and was published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, in 1996. In the last decade a great number of papers have been reported in the literature describing chirality in different fields of chemistry: organometallics, catalysis, coordination chemistry, supramolecular assemblies and nanomaterials. Therefore a new book devoted to this topic will no doubt provide a very interesting tool for students and researchers who are interested to this increasingly important field. We feel that a complementary book, Chirality in Transition Metal Chemistry: Molecules, Supramolecular Assemblies and Materials, which covers new discoveries in the field since 1996, and establishes the interesting connectivity between the various aspects of chirality in different fields of chemistry, will be a valuable work to advance research in this area. These different subjects are treated in Chapters 2 to 6 of this book. Chapter 1 represents the introduction and summary of the book. We have attempted to cite examples and key references which cover the full breadth of the field in all its diversity but, bearing in mind that the selection of references necessary for a textbook is always arbitrary to a certain degree, we apologize in advance to the many researchers whose work could not be included. No book is free from errors and this one will be no exception, so we would appreciate it if colleagues around the world would point out errors and mistakes and suggest any improvements. We hope this book will serve as a guide for students and researchers working in this area.

This work could not have been accomplished without the help, comments and advice of many people who agreed to read the chapters and contributed to improving the quality of the book and to whom we are very grateful. Thus we thank Professors Peter J. Stang (University of Utah) and Ge´rard Coquerel (University of Rouen) for reviewing Chapter 2. We also thank Professors Henri Brunner ‘Emeritus’ (University of Regensburg), John A. Gladysz (University AM-Texas) and Antonio Togni (University of Zurich-ETH) for Chapter 3. We are grateful to Professor Jacqueline K. Barton (California Institute of Technology) for Chapter 4. We also thank Professors Kenneth N. Raymond (UC-Berkeley) and Rolf W. Saalfrank (University of Erlangen) for reviewing Chapter 5. We are grateful to Professors Vincent L. Pecoraro (University of Michigan) and Ge´rard Coquerel (University of Rouen) for Chapter 6. We thank Debra and Simon Greenfield for translating Chapters 2 and 6, which were originally written in French by Dr Michel Gruselle, into English. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 were written in English by Dr Hani Amouri, while the introduction, (Chapter 1) was written by both authors.

We also thank the Wiley team at Chichester, West Sussex: Paul Deards, Richard Davies, Rebecca Ralf, and their colleagues for improving the quality and the presentation of the book and for the production, as well as Lyn Hicks for the copy-editing process, especially when the authors were writing in English, which is not our first language.

We are indebted to Professor Alex von Zelewsky who agreed to read the whole document and to write the Foreword to this book; these few words are not enough to express our gratitude and our immense respect to him. Finally, we would like to thank our life partners Jeannine and Anita for their support and patience throughout this period of writing.

H. Amouri
M. Gruselle
Paris, July 2008