Hydrogenation of Unsaturated Six-Membered Cyclic Hydrocarbons Studied by the Parahydrogen-Induced Polarization Technique

Abstract

Parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) is an efficient technique for mechanistic investigations of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenations. Herein, heterogeneous gas phase hydrogenation of six-membered cyclic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, cyclohexene, 1,3-cyclohexadiene and 1,4-cyclohexadiene) over Rh/TiO2, Pd/TiO2, and Pt/TiO2 catalysts was studied using PHIP. As expected, cyclohexene hydrogenation led to the formation of cyclohexane which because of its symmetry should not exhibit any PHIP effects. However, the presence of 13C nuclei at natural abundance (1.1%) breaks molecular symmetry, resulting in the observation of 13C satellite signals exhibiting PHIP effects in the 1H NMR spectra. In experiments with cyclohexene, the reactant’s NMR signals were also polarized, demonstrating the possibility of cyclohexene dehydrogenation to 1,3-cyclohexadiene and subsequent hydrogenation to cyclohexene. In the hydrogenation of 1,3-cyclohexadiene and 1,4-cyclohexadiene, all NMR signals of cyclohex...