A highly reactive mononuclear nonheme iron(IV)-oxo complex with a low-spin (S = 1) triplet ground state in both C–H bond activation and oxo transfer reactions is reported; this nonheme iron(IV)-oxo complex is more reactive than an iron(IV)-oxo porphyrin π-cation radical (i.e., a model of cytochrome P450 compound I) and is the most reactive species in kinetic studies among nonheme iron(IV)-oxo complexes reported so far. DFT calculations support the experimental results with extremely low activation barriers in the C–H bond activation of cyclohexane and 1,4-cyclohexadiene. The DFT calculations reveal that the S = 1 state is set up to easily lead to the highly reactive S = 2 high-spin iron(IV)-oxo species.

Synthetic non-heme iron-oxo and iron-halide complexes promote selective halogenation of the sp³-C–H bonds via hydrogen atom abstraction and halide rebound phenomenon.

A non-heme iron complex catalyses the aziridination of various olefins and the amidation of thioanisole in good yields at the expense of an aryl iodinane.