The reduction and recycling of environmentally-detrimental small molecule pollutants is a critical, yet unresolved, challenge faced by the global community. Processes to convert these pollutants into value-added products typically require the input of electrons and this has generated wide interest in transition metal catalysts containing redox-active ligands able to store and transport electrons. Quinones serve as electron shuttles in biological systems and various N-heteroquinones have garnered recent attention for applications in the field of organic electronics. Given these properties, bridging heteroquinones represent an unutilized class of ligands applicable to these types of molecular transformations. Current efforts to synthesize and characterize our tetraethyltetra-aza-anthraquinone (TAAQ<sup>Et</sup>) ligand have proven promising with the free ligand able to store as many as 4 electrons. Further, coordination with low valent metals has demonstrated an ability to oxidize metal centers and generate interesting bimetallic structures. Fuller exploration of this novel ligand’s capabilities to produce unusual transition metal complexes and their subsequent reactivity with small molecules such as carbon dioxide will be described. Additionally, preliminary work from our unique collaboration for applications of our ligand-metal designs on a surface for heterogeneous catalysis will be discussed briefly.

Tetra-aza-anthraquinone: A biologically-inspired redox-active ligand bridging homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis toward the reduction of small molecules

254th National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.