Carbon protonation of 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidines: synthesis, NMR studies, and theoretical calculations

FeNC Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalyst with High Utilization Penta-Coordinated Sites

Atomic Fe in N-doped carbon (FeNC) electrocatalysts for oxygen (O₂ ) reduction at the cathode of proton exchange membrane fuel cells are the most promising alternative to platinum-group-metal catalysts. Despite recent progress on atomic FeNC O₂  reduction, their controlled synthesis and stability for practical applications remain challenging. A two-step synthesis approach has recently led to significant advances in terms of Fe-loading and mass activity; however, the Fe utilization remains low owing to the difficulty of building scaffolds with sufficient porosity that electrochemically exposes the active sites. Herein, this issue is addressed by coordinating Fe in a highly porous nitrogen-doped carbon support (≈3295 m²  g^-1 ), prepared by pyrolysis of inexpensive 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidine and a Mg²⁺ salt active site template and porogen. Upon Fe coordination, a high electrochemical active site density of 2.54 × 10¹⁹  sites g_FeNC ^-1  and a record 52% FeN_x electrochemical utilization based on in situ nitrite stripping are achieved. The Fe single atoms are characterized pre- and post-electrochemical accelerated stress testing by aberration-corrected high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy, showing no Fe clustering. Moreover, ex situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy and low-temperature Mössbauer spectroscopy suggest the presence of penta-coordinated Fe sites, which are further studied by density functional theory calculations.

Molecular Doping of Electrochemically Prepared Triazine-Based Carbon Nitride by 2,4,6-Triaminopyrimidine for Improved Photocatalytic Properties

Copolymerization of melamine with 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidine (TAP) in an electrochemically induced polymerization process leads to the formation of molecular doped poly(triazine imide) (PTI). The polymerization is based on the electrolysis of water and evolving radicals during this process. The incorporation of TAP is shown by techniques such as elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared and NMR spectroscopies, and powder X-ray diffraction, and it is shown that the carbon content can be tuned by the variation of the molar ratio of the two precursors. This incorporation of TAP directly influences the electronic structure of PTI and as a result, a red shift can be observed in UV-vis spectroscopy. The smaller band gap and the increased absorption in the visible range lead to improved photocatalytic properties. In dye degradation experiments, it was possible to observe an increase of the rate of the degradation of methylene blue by a factor of 4 in comparison to undoped PTI or 7 if compared to melon.

Bis(2,4,6-tri-amino-pyrimidin-1-ium) sulfate penta-hydrate

The asymmetric unit of the title salt, 2C4H8N5 (+)·SO4 (2-)·5H2O, contains four 2,4,6-tri-amino-pyrimidinium (TAPH(+)) cations, two sulfate anions and ten lattice water mol-ecules. Each two of the four TAPH(+) cations form dimers via N-H⋯N hydrogen bonds between the amino groups and the unprotonated pyrimidine N atoms [graph-set motif R 2 (2)(8)]. The (TAPH(+))2 dimers, in turn, form slightly offset infinite π-π stacks parallel to [010], with centroid-centroid distances between pyrimidine rings of 3.5128 (15) and 3.6288 (16) Å. Other amino H atoms, as well as the pyrimidinium N-H groups, are hydrogen-bonded to sulfate and lattice water O atoms. The SO4 (2-) anions and water mol-ecules are inter-connected with each other via O-H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The combination of hydrogen-bonding inter-actions and π-π stacking leads to the formation of a three-dimensional network with alternating columns of TAPH(+) cations and channels filled with sulfate anions and water mol-ecules. One of the sulfate anions shows a minor disorder by a ca 37° rotation around one of the S-O bonds [occupancy ratio of the two sets of sites 0.927 (3):0.073 (3)]. One water mol-ecule is disordered over two mutually exclusive positions with an occupancy ratio of 0.64 (7):0.36 (7).