Strategy to isolate ionic gold sites on silica surface: Increasing their efficiency as catalyst for the formation of 1,3-diynes

Abstract

A new strategy is presented to obtain an efficient heterogeneous gold catalyst constituted by isolated ionic gold sites, which is known to be effective in alkyne coupling reaction. The procedure is based on a significant difference between offered gold amount and available adsorbent sites on the support, ensuring the formation of very active isolated gold ion sites. In order to achieve this purpose, mesoporous silica xerogel was grafted with an ionic silsesquioxane containing charged ammonium quaternary group. The modified silica showed 0.25 mmol of cationic sites per gram of material and presented thermal stability up to 200 °C. This material was applied as support for immobilization of Au(III) ions as square planar AuCl4− complex. The gold amount offered was just 12 % of the exchangeable capacity. The catalyst was efficiently applied in the cross coupling reactions, in which only 0.22 mol% was applied to obtain symmetric and non-symmetric 1,3-diynes.