There has been a scarcity of reports into the reactivity of phosphine gas (PH3) with a range of transition metal complexes mainly due to the toxic nature of working with PH3 and the specialised equipment required. Even fewer catalytic transformations involving PH3 mediated by transition metals have been reported to date. Most notable is the industrial process to form tris(hydroxymethyl)phosphine, a flame retardant; this reaction of PH3 and formaldehyde is catalysed by platinum complexes. Therefore, investigation into the use of PH3 as a P1 source would provide an attractive atom-economical route to access more complex organophosphine compounds. Within the Webster group we are interested in investigating iron catalysed hydrofunctionalisation reactions, in particular hydrophosphination reactions as well as the mechanism of these transformation and understanding the elemental steps involved. Here we disclose early results into the reactions of a number of iron complexes supported by monodentate, bidentate and tridentate ligand scaffolds with PH3. The PH3 is generated in-situ from commercial, bench-stable and cheap source, Zn3P2, bypassing the need for expensive experimental set-up. Further exploration into potential catalytic hydrophosphination reactions using PH3 is carried out.

Reactivity of PH3 with iron complexes

ACS Spring 2022

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