Light driven decarboxylative cross coupling of acrylic acid and iodobenzene using [Mo132] type keplerate as a catalyst

Abstract

Photochemical decarboxylative cross coupling reaction is one of the most significant research areas in industrial chemistry. Many research groups working on the topic use a photoredox catalyst merged with another coordination catalyst. The major problem in this case is the cost of such a cooperative catalyst system. Thus, to reduce the cost of the catalyst, designing a self-sufficient catalyst system is required. In our present work we have synthesized a giant molybdenum based polyoxometalate which acts as a photocatalyst as well as a coordination catalyst. We have shown that acrylic acid gets decarboxylated in the presence of UV light and gets coupled with iodobenzene to form styrene with maximum yield of 62%. The catalyst material is also stable under the reaction conditions and hence it is reusable.