Earth-abundant bimetallic and multimetallic catalysts for Epoxide/CO2 ring-opening copolymerization

Abstract

In order to reduce mankind's carbon footprint and thus reducing the environmental toll of human activities, it is necessary to implement industrial technologies to convert carbon dioxide in added-value products, from which polycarbonates represent an important category. This review discusses the development of catalytic systems for the ring-opening copolymerization (ROCOP) of epoxides and CO2 to produce polycarbonates, focusing on those systems made from earth-abundant metals. Since the ROCOP of epoxides and CO2 commonly proceed through a multinuclear mechanism, this account focuses only on bi- and multimetallic heterogeneous catalytic systems developed from 1985 onwards and homogeneous catalysts reported after 2015, giving emphasis on the structural features of these complexes and their corresponding reactivities.