Because of their stability and selectivity, precious metals are currently used for the majority of industrial catalytic processes. However, the environmental toxicity, scarcity, and expense of these metals has created a demand for more sustainable catalysts that instead utilize abundant first-row transition metals. To this end, a tetradentate mixed-donor N2P2 ligand has been designed to create an ideal environment for first-row transition metals in different oxidation states. The ligand, which contains a β-diketiminate backbone appended with pendant phosphine donors, combines both hard and soft donor atoms and creates a size-sensitive molecular aperture to bind the metal. Methoxy groups have been added to the ligand’s phenyl linkers in response to a previous study of methyl and dimethyl analogs. The metalation of this ligand with Co, Ni and Zn will be discussed, along with the subsequent characterization of these complexes via NMR, UV-vis spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography.

Synthesis of first-row transition metal complexes using a methoxy-substituted N2P2 ligand

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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