A Set of Olefin Metathesis Catalysts with Extraordinary Stickiness to Silica

We report on a series of six new pyridinealkoxide-bridged first and second generation ruthenium carbenes with similar or even higher activity in ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), cross metathesis (CM), and ring closing metathesis (RCM) reactions than state-of-the-art catalysts. The new precatalysts show an extraordinarily high stickiness to commercially available silica, which significantly enhances their adsorptive separation from unprocessed reaction mixtures.