Design of molecular-imprinting metal-complex catalysts

This article attempted to review novel metal-complex catalysts prepared by molecular-imprinting methods, presenting our work on recent catalyst design at surfaces. Molecular imprinting is a way to produce cavity with a particular molecule (template) by polymerization of organic and inorganic materials and removal of the template. The cavity with memory of the template provides shape-selective reaction space for the molecule which has similar shape to the template: Recently, the application to metal-complex catalysts has been achieved to exploit unique property different from homogeneous and simple supported metal-complex catalysts. Imprinting metal-complex catalysts prepared by using reaction intermediate or transition state analogues as templates for asymmetric hydride transfer reduction of ketones, aldol condensation, and shape-selective hydrogenation of simple alkenes without any functional groups are focused in the viewpoint of new approaches in design of shape-selective metal-complex catalysts. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.