Quest for metal/NH bifunctional bioinspired catalysis in a dinuclear platform.

Bifunctional catalysts, in which two functionalities cooperate in substrate activation and transformation, promote a number of chemical and biological reactions quite efficiently. This perspective mainly describes our efforts to extend the concept of the metal/NH bifunctional mononuclear catalysts to dinuclear systems. The late transition metal dinuclear complexes with bridging sulfonylated nitrogen donors and parent amides (NH(2)) are focused on particularly, while the chemistry of related nitrogen-bridged polynuclear complexes is also mentioned.