ABSTRACT
Organometallic chemistry is concerned with compounds that have one or more carbon atoms bound to a metal. Frankland discovered the ethyl and methyl derivatives of zinc, tin, and mercury in the mid-1800s, and the field of organometallic chemistry was created. Since then, the number of organic transformations based on organometallic compounds has increased steadily. Organometallic compounds may be of several types depending upon the type of metal–carbon bond; for instance, compounds like W(CH3)6 or Si(CH3)4 have a metal–carbon σ-bond while compounds like ferrocene or Ziese’s salt have a metal–carbon π-bond. The synthetic uses of such and other organometallic compounds will be discussed in this chapter.
