17O NMR Facilitates Structural Studies of Catalytic Sites

SOMC Oxygen's perspective
The characterization of supported metal complexes generally follows a top-down approach, starting with the ligands. We propose a bottom-up strategy wherein the structure of the complex is probed through its interactions with oxygen atoms from the support.
Scientific Achievement

A new strategy generalized the high-resolution structural characterization of oxide-supported species.

Significance and Impact

Few single-site catalyst structures have been determined with high spatial resolutions. This is in part caused by the site-labelling requirements of prior strategies. Scientists have shown that 17O atoms from the support can be used to determine the structures of sites grafted to any oxide support by adopting a bottom-up approach.

Research Details
  • Distances between 17O atoms from the support and ligands are measured to gain structural constraints.
  • Metal-bound 17O sites can also be used to radially probe the ligand environment of the metal.
  • The approach is used to determine the grafting chemistry of an Ir(POCOP) hydrogenation catalyst.

Perras, F. A.; Arroyave, A.; Southern, S. A.; Lamb, J. V.; Li, Y.; LaPointe, A.; Delferro, M. Chem. Commun. 2023, in press.