ABSTRACT

The term ‘olefin metathesis’ refers to an interchange reaction of alkylidene groups between alkenes. The total number of double bonds remains unchanged [1].

The history of olefin metathesis started in the mid 1950s, when Anderson and Merckling (Du Pont) – during their work on the Ziegler-Natta polymerization of norbornene (NBE) – received by means of TiCl4/EtMgBr catalysts a novel polymer [2,3]. In 1957 Eleuterio (Du Pont) filed a patent, which describes the polymerization of several cyclic olefins employing, among others, LiAlH4-activated MoO3/Al2O3 catalysts [4]. Ozonolysis of a norbornene polymer yielded cis-cyclopentane-1,3-dicarboxylic acid, thus demonstrating the novel and unexpected nature of this polymerization reaction [4,5].