Unprecedented reversible migration of amide to schiff base ligands attached to tin: latent single-site initiators for lactide polymerization.

In an unprecedented transformation, amide ligands are found to attack the imine carbon centers of tridentate Schiff base ligands attached to tin. The process is reversible, and the resultant (masked) amide species can be exploited as latent single-site initiators for the controlled polymerization of rac-lactide.