Combined experimental and theoretical studies on a half-sandwich ruthenium catalyst’s reactivity were carried out by our cluster’s faculty fellow Dr. Richmond Lee and his long-standing collaborator Prof. Weiguo Jia from the Anhui Normal University, China. This paper examines the role of the catalyst class towards transfer hydrogenation of nitroarenes to anilines which is very relevant to chemical industries. Mechanistic insights gained with theoretical studies could further strengthen the design of more efficient catalysts which is the ultimate aim of Richmond’s research goals here at SUTD. This is his first work as a corresponding author in SUTD published in a major peer-reviewed journal in the field of organometallics.

For the full article, please refer to http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.organomet.7b00721