Ammonia is a low-cost and potentially valuable building block for almost every nitrogen-containing compound required by industry. There is an obvious interest in utilizing this chemical as feedstock in catalytic organic transformations to produce higher-value products, an issue that has began to be explored with some degree of success.[1] However, most of late transition metal catalyzed reactions do not occur with ammonia. Several factors have been invoked to explain this lack of reactivity: [2] 1) The high strength of the NÀH bond of ammonia (107 kcal mol À1 ) makes its activation very difficult to achieve by metal centers; 2) the catalyst often deactivates through the formation of stable Werner ammine (M ! NH 3 ) adducts; and 3) the low acidity of ammonia prevents its participation in proton exchange reactions that could lead to NÀH activation.In order to achieve a metal-mediated functionalization of ammonia, an imperative requisite should be the formation of M À NH 2 bonds directly from ammonia (i.e. rather than leading to stable M ! NH 3 adducts).[3] So far, only few early examples involving interaction of NH 3 with iridium complexes followed an oxidative addition profile.[4] This concept was elegantly illustrated by Hartwig et al., who reported on the formal oxidative addition of ammonia to an electron-rich Ir I pincer system, leading to the first structurally characterized terminal amido hydrido Ir III complex. [5] In spite of the efficacy of this N À H activation, uptake and homolytic breakage of ammonia by late transition metal complexes still remains a difficult goal.[6] We assumed that a good approach to induce the formation of M À NH 2 bonds, circumventing the formation of Werner adducts, should rely on an appropriate design of organometallic precursors. Herein we report on a synthetic protocol that uses gaseous ammonia as "NH 2 " source to generate stable novel parent bridging and terminal amido Rh I and Ir I complexes under very mild conditions. We chose as metallic precursors dinuclear complexes bearing alkoxo-bridging ligands, well suited to induce NÀH activation. [7] In this way, treatment of the methoxo-bridged compounds [{M(m-OMe)(tfbb)} 2 ] (M = Rh, Ir; tfbb = tetrafluorobenzobarrelene) with gaseous ammonia in diethyl ether at atmospheric pressure rapidly afforded the parent amidobridged trinuclear complexes [{M(m 2 -NH 2 )(tfbb)} 3 ] (M = Rh (1), Ir (2)) which were isolated in good yields. On the other hand, reactions of the cod complexes [{M(m-OMe)(cod)} 2 ] (cod = 1,5-cycloctadiene) with gaseous ammonia yielded dinuclear amido-bridged complexes [{M(m-NH 2 )(cod)} 2 ] (M = Rh (3), Ir (4)) in excellent yields (Scheme 1). All the reactions leading to complexes 1-4 were found to be reversible. For example, monitoring by NMR spectroscopy the reaction of 3 with MeOH in a 1:1 ratio in [D 6 ]benzene showed upon 10 min, when the equilibrium was considered to be reached, the presence of unchanged 3, the original methoxo-bridged complex [{Rh(m-OMe)(cod)} 2 ] and the mixed amido-alkoxo species [{Rh(co...