Oxide Relay: An Efficient Mechanism for Catalytic Water Oxidation at Hydrophobic Electrode Surfaces

Removing the Barrier in O-O Bond Formation Via the Combination of Intramolecular Radical Coupling and the Oxide Relay Mechanism

The Ru(tda) catalyst has been a major milestone in the development of molecular water oxidation catalysts due to its outstanding performance at neutral pH. The role of the noncoordinating carboxylate group is to act as a nucleophile, donating an oxygen atom to the oxo group, thereby acting as an oxide relay (OR) mechanism for O-O bond formation. A substitution of the carboxylates for phosphonate groups has been proposed, resulting in the Ru(tPaO) catalyst, which has shown even more efficient performance in experimental characterization. In this study, we explore the feasibility of the OR mechanism in the newly reported Ru(tPaO) molecular catalyst. We investigated the catalytic cycle using density functional theory and identified a variation of the OR mechanism that involves radical oxygen atoms in O-O bond formation. We have also determined that the subsequent hydroxide nucleophilic attack is the sole rate-limiting step in the catalytic cycle. All activation free energies are very low, with a free-energy barrier of 2.1 kcal/mol for O-O bond formation and 4.2 kcal/mol for OH- nucleophilic attack.

The Impact of Ligand Carboxylates on Electrocatalyzed Water Oxidation

Fossil fuel shortage and severe climate changes due to global warming have prompted extensive research on carbon-neutral and renewable energy resources. Hydrogen gas (H₂), a clean and high energy density fuel, has emerged as a potential solution for both fulfilling energy demands and diminishing the emission of greenhouse gases. Currently, water oxidation (WO) constitutes the bottleneck in the overall process of producing H₂ from water. As a result, the design of efficient catalysts for WO has become an intensively pursued area of research in recent years. Among all the molecular catalysts reported to date, ruthenium-based catalysts have attracted particular attention due to their robust nature and higher activity compared to catalysts based on other transition metals.Over the past two decades, we and others have studied a wide range of ruthenium complexes displaying impressive catalytic performance for WO in terms of turnover number (TON) and turnover frequency (TOF). However, to produce practically applicable electrochemical, photochemical, or photo-electrochemical WO reactors, further improvement of the catalysts' structure to decrease the overpotential and increase the WO rate is of utmost importance. WO reaction, that is, the production of molecular oxygen and protons from water, requires the formation of an O-O bond through the orchestration of multiple proton and electron transfers. Promotion of these processes using redox noninnocent ligand frameworks that can accept and transfer electrons has therefore attracted substantial attention. The strategic modifications of the ligand structure in ruthenium complexes to enable proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) and atom proton transfer (APT; in the context of WO, it is the oxygen atom (metal oxo) transfer to the oxygen atom of a water molecule in concert with proton transfer to another water molecule) to facilitate the O-O bond formation have played a central role in these efforts.In particular, promising results have been obtained with ligand frameworks containing carboxylic acid groups that either are directly bonded to the metal center or reside in the close vicinity. The improvement of redox and chemical properties of the catalysts by introduction of carboxylate groups in the ligands has proven to be quite general as demonstrated for a range of mono- and dinuclear ruthenium complexes featuring ligand scaffolds based on pyridine, imidazole, and pyridazine cores. In the first coordination sphere, the carboxylate groups are firmly coordinated to the metal center as negatively charged ligands, improving the stability of the complexes and preventing metal leaching during catalysis. Another important phenomenon is the reduction of the potentials required for the formation of higher valent intermediates, especially metal-oxo species, which take active part in the key O-O bond formation step. Furthermore, the free carboxylic acid/carboxylate units in the proximity to the active center have shown exciting proton donor/acceptor properties (through PCET or APT, chemically noninnocent) that can dramatically improve the rate as well as the overpotential of the WO reaction.

The Role of Counterions in Intermolecular Radical Coupling of Ru-bda Catalysts

Intermolecular radical coupling (also interaction of two metal centers I2M) is one of the main mechanisms for O–O bond formation in water oxidation catalysts. For Ru(bda)L2 (H2bda = 2,2′-bipyridine-6,6′-dicarboxylate, L = pyridine or similar nitrogen containing heterocyclic ligands) catalysts a significant driving force in water solution is the hydrophobic effects driven by the solvent. The same catalyst has been successfully employed to generate N2 from ammonia, also via I2M, but here the solvent was acetonitrile where hydrophobic effects are absent. We used a classical force field for the key intermediate [RuVIN(bda)(py)2]+ to simulate the dimerization free energy by calculation of the potential mean force, in both water and acetonitrile to understand the differences and similarities. In both solvents the complex dimerizes with similar free energy profiles. In water the complexes are essentially free cations with limited ion paring, while in acetonitrile the ion-pairing is much more significant. This ion-pairing leads to significant screening of the charges, making dimerization possible despite lower solvent polarity that could lead to repulsion between the charged complexes. In water the lower ion pairing is compensated by the hydrophobic effect leading to favorable dimerization despite repulsion of the charges. A hypothetical doubly charged [RuVIIN(bda)py2]2+ was also studied for deeper understanding of the charge effect. Despite the double charge the complexes only dimerized favorably in the lower dielectric solvent acetonitrile, while in water the separated state is more stable. In the doubly charged catalyst the effect of ion-pairing is even more pronounced in acetonitrile where it is fully paired similar to the 1+ complex, while in water the separation of the ions leads to greater repulsion between the two catalysts, which prevents dimerization.

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