Systematic Studies of 17-Electron Rhenium(II) Carbonyl Phosphine Complexes

Rhenium Complexes Bearing Tridentate and Bidentate Phosphinoamine Ligands in the Production of Biofuel Alcohols via the Guerbet Reaction

We report a variety of rhenium complexes supported by bidentate and tridentate phosphinoamine ligands and their use in the formation of the advanced biofuel isobutanol from methanol and ethanol. Rhenium pincer complexes 1-3 are effective catalysts for this process, with 2 giving isobutanol in 35% yields, with 97% selectivity in the liquid fraction, over 16 h with catalyst loadings as low as 0.07 mol %. However, these catalysts show poorer overall selectivity, with the formation of a significant amount of carboxylate salt solid byproduct also being observed. Production of the active catalyst 1d has been followed by ³¹P NMR spectroscopy, and the importance of the presence of base and elevated temperatures to catalyst activation has been established. Complexes supported by diphosphine ligands are inactive for Guerbet chemistry; however, complexes supported by bidentate phosphinoamine ligands show greater selectivity for isobutanol formation over carboxylate salts. The novel complex 7 was able to produce isobutanol in 28% yield over 17 h. The importance of the N-H moiety to the catalytic performance has also been established, giving further weight to the hypothesis that these catalysts operate via a cooperative mechanism.

Cyanate Formation via Photolytic Splitting of Dinitrogen

Light-driven N2 cleavage into molecular nitrides is an attractive strategy for synthetic nitrogen fixation. However, suitable platforms are rare. Furthermore, the development of catalytic protocols via this elementary step suffers from poor understanding of N-N photosplitting within dinitrogen complexes, as well as of the thermochemical and kinetic framework for coupled follow-up chemistry. We here present a tungsten pincer platform, which undergoes fully reversible, thermal N2 splitting and reverse nitride coupling, allowing for experimental derivation of thermodynamic and kinetic parameters of the N-N cleavage step. Selective N-N splitting was also obtained photolytically. DFT computations allocate the productive excitations within the {WNNW} core. Transient absorption spectroscopy shows ultrafast repopulation of the electronic ground state. Comparison with ground-state kinetics and resonance Raman data support a pathway for N-N photosplitting via a nonstatistically vibrationally excited ground state that benefits from vibronically coupled structural distortion of the core. Nitride carbonylation and release are demonstrated within a full synthetic cycle for trimethylsilylcyanate formation directly from N2 and CO.

Use of the ferrocene oxidation process to provide both reference electrode potential calibration and a simple measurement (via semiintegration) of the uncompensated resistance in cyclic voltammetric studies in high-resistance organic solvents

Because of its presumed ideal reversible behavior, the oxidation of ferrocene is widely used in cyclic voltammetric studies in highly resistive organic solvents as a means of reference electrode potential calibration. In this study, it is shown that a good estimate of the uncompensated resistance value, needed for reference potential correction and also frequently an input parameter in simulation of the theory, can be obtained simultaneously with the ferrocene reference potential measurement using a simple analysis based on the semiintegral. Application to cyclic voltammetric oxidation of ferrocene in dichloromethane (0.1 M NBu4PF6), under conditions where uncompensated resistances of approximately 2.5 komega are encountered, is used to illustrate the fidelity of the semiintegral method of analysis. Inclusion of this estimated resistance value as the input parameter in a commercially available digital simulation package confirms that the oxidation of ferrocene in dichloromethane represents a close-to-ideal diffusion-controlled reversible process. However, use of the semiintegral method of data analysis also enables detection of subtle forms of nonideality encountered with the ferrocene oxidation process in other media where kinetically controlled adsorption of the ferricenium cation may occur.

Elucidation of the Wide Range of Reaction Pathways That Accompany the Electrochemical Oxidation of cis,mer-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(1)-dpm)(eta(2)-dpm)X] (dpm = Ph(2)PCH(2)PPh(2); X = Cl, Br)

The electrochemical oxidation of cis,mer-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(1)-dpm)(eta(2)-dpm)Br] (dpm = Ph(2)PCH(2)PPh(2)), or (cis,mer)(0),()()has been examined in dichloromethane (0.1 M Bu(4)NPF(6)) by voltammetric, bulk electrolytic, in situ and ex situ spectroelectrochemical and simulation techniques. On the voltammetric time scale at 20 degrees C, the neutral 18-electron cis,mer Mn(I) species is oxidized to the corresponding 17-electron cation which at slow scan rates isomerizes to the trans cation. Simulations are consistent with a rate constant of 3.1 +/- 0.3 s(-1) for this isomerization process. Monitoring the reaction by in situ IR spectroscopy at low-temperature enables the identification of the nu(CO) bands of all four species ((cis,mer)(0); (cis,mer)(+); (trans)(0); (trans)(+)) in the resultant square reaction scheme that is operative under these thin layer electrolysis conditions. Additionally, 17-electron cis,fac-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(1)-dpm)(eta(2)-dpm)Br](+) and its 18-electron (cis,fac)(0) counterpart, generated by a redox-induced catalytic isomerization reaction, are detected and characterized by IR spectroscopy (nu(CO)). Room-temperature bulk oxidative electrolysis experiments reveal that the trans cation, generated in bulk solution from the (cis,mer)(+) and (cis,fac)(+) isomers, slowly ejects bromide with a rate constant of 1.6 x 10(-3) s(-1) to form trans-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(2)-dpm)(2)](+). The equivalent voltammetry in acetonitrile is complicated by an additional competing kinetic step which is attributed to reaction of this cation with the solvent. However, the major product formed upon oxidation at room temperature is still the trans cation. Less detailed studies on the oxidation of cis,mer-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(1)-dpm)(eta(2)-dpm)Cl] only show significant differences under conditions of bulk electrolysis after trans-[Mn(CO)(2)(eta(2)-dpm)(2)](2+) is formed via expulsion of Cl(-).