**Abstract**

The salen and related ligands are very popular among the inorganic chemists due to multiple reasons such as ease in synthesis, coordinating ability with very long range of metal ions, facilitating the metal ions to adopt various geometries, ability of stabilising the metal ion in variable oxidation states and potential applications of metallosalen in several fields. The most common application of metallosalen is in the field of catalysis because of their recoverability, reusability, high efficiency, high selectivity and their capability of working as homogeneous as well as heterogeneous catalysts for numerous functional group manipulations including asymmetric synthesis. Molecular magnetism, sensory applications, bioinorganic activities and medicinal applications of metallosalen are also very promising areas of their applications. Porous materials involving metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and supramolecular building blocks are increasingly getting attention of researchers for the gas absorption and heterogeneous catalysis.

**Keywords:** salen, salphen, Schiff-base, chelate ligand, metallosalen
