Boron nitrogen adducts are promising hydrogen storage materials due to their high gravimetric H2 densities and their favorable kinetics/thermodynamics for hydrogen release. Though the dehydrogenation of B-N materials, such as ammonia borane, has been widely studied, the regeneration of spent B-N materials such as borazine and polyborazylene remains a significant challenge. A potential strategy to achieve borazine hydrogenation is to exploit its isostructural/isoelectronic relationship with arenes, which can be hydrogenated at transition metal centers via addition of hydride and proton equivalents. This presentation describes the reductive behavior of transition metal complexes of borazines, as well as their reactivity with respect to the addition of nucleophiles and electrophiles across B=N bonds. In this way, a coordinated borazine can be transformed into a substituted cyclotriborazane resulting from the step-wise reduction of B=N bonds. These findings constitute an important step in developing low-energy methods for the regeneration of spent B-N materials.

Metal-mediated reactivity of borazines for the regeneration of B-N hydrogen storage materials

246th National Meeting (2013)

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