Abstract
Oxidation reactions are fundamental transformations in organic synthesis and chemical industry. With oxygen or air as terminal oxidant, aerobic oxidation catalysis provides the most sustainable and economic oxidation processes. Most aerobic oxidation catalysis employs redox metal as its active center. While nature provides non-redox metal strategy as in pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ)-dependent methanol dehydrogenases (MDH), such an effective chemical version is unknown. Inspired by the recently discovered rare earth metal-dependent enzyme Ln-MDH, here we show that an open-shell semi-quinone anionic radical species in complexing with lanthanum could serve as a very efficient aerobic oxidation catalyst under ambient conditions. In this catalyst, the lanthanum(III) ion serves only as a Lewis acid promoter and the redox process occurs exclusively on the semiquinone ligand. The catalysis is initiated by 1e--reduction of lanthanum-activated ortho-quinone to a semiquinone-lanthanum complex La(SQ-.)2, which undergoes a coupled O-H/C-H (PCHT: proton coupled hydride transfer) dehydrogenation for aerobic oxidation of alcohols with up to 330 h−1 TOF.
Highlights
Oxidation reactions are fundamental transformations in organic synthesis and chemical industry
A rare earth-metal dependent enzyme was not discovered till 2011, when the first lanthanide enzyme, Ln-methanol dehydrogenases (MDH) was discovered in methylotrophic bacterial by Kawai[2,3]
Similar absorptions were reported for semiquinone radical anion in the presence of metal ion such as Sc(III) or Zn(II) (Fig. 6a)[63,64]. It should be noted a Ce-MDH was crystallized with their active site existed in the form of a Ce(III)semiquinone anionic radical complex[65]
Summary
Oxidation reactions are fundamental transformations in organic synthesis and chemical industry. We report an ortho-quinone/lanthanum complex as highly effective aerobic oxidation catalyst. An open-shell semiquinone anionic radical species in complexing with lanthanum(III) ion is found to serve as the catalytically active species for the oxidation of alcohols under aerobic conditions.
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