Iron And Molybdenum Complexes Supported By Pincer Ligands

Download or read book Iron and Molybdenum Complexes Supported by Pincer Ligands written by Steven Ryan Ruark and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its discovery in the mid 1950’s, olefin metathesis has become one of the most widely used chemical reactions. Olefin metathesis involves the breaking of carbon-carbon double bonds and the redistribution of the fragments to form new olefins by way of a metal alkylidene.6 It is used in industry to convert cheap plant oils into useful products such as alpha olefins, jet fuel and green diesel. The Elevance BioRefinery has the capacity to run this reaction and produce up to 400 million pounds of products per year. The most expensive part in this refinery process is the catalyst itself. The catalyst currently used is an alkylidene complex of ruthenium—an expensive and rare metal. This has led the Schrodi group to explore the possibility of developing catalysts based on abundant and cheap metals such as iron or molybdenum.40,41 We first attempted to support iron with a tridentate pincer ligand, OiPrPONOP, however the ligand was not robust enough and more than one ligand was required to adequately protect the iron xv center. Ultimately, the ligand was reacted with Fe(PMe3)4 to make (OiPrPONOP)Fe(PMe3)2. This complex is very stable and unreactive, preventing its transformation into any catalytic species. We then turned our attention to a pincer OCO-NHC ligand. This ligand was able to stabilize an iron tricyclohexyphosphine complex, (OC-NHC)FePCy3, However, attempts to react this complex with diazo compounds to form an iron alkylidene (OCO-NHC)Fe=CHR were unsuccessful. Further studies focused on replacing the PCy3 ligand with pyridines, in an attempt to make the complex more labile. However, the resulting species proved much too sensitive to water and was difficult to isolate and characterize. Inspired by the research done by the Chirik group where they reduced several arylpyridinediimine ( ArPDI) ironII complexes into a reduced N2-bridged complex. They reported the bound N2 molecules would readily exchange with 15N2 and ultimately they were able to form an iron alkylidene complex. However, the complex was not metathesis active.54,42 We successfully reduced MesPDIFeBr2 into the bis-N2 complex but the complex refused to react cleanly in attempts to make iron alkylidene species. We also explored the possibility of forming a molybdenum alkylidene supported by a tridentate iPrPONOP ligand. After successfully forming iPrPONOPMoCl3 we tried several strategies to form and isolate a molybdenum alkylidene. We attempted a similar reduction as the iron species trying to access a bis-N2 bridged molybdenum complex but the reaction resulted in decomposition of the complex. We then attempted ‘Schrock type’ chemistry by reacting the iPrPONOPMoCl3 complex with Grignard reagents.81 However, this strategy resulted in decomposition as well. We successfully performed ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of norbornene by adding Grignard reagents to several different tridentate supported MoCl3 precatalysts. Select polymers were then analyzed for cis content by 1 H NMR to probe for serioregularity. The only precatalyst to have more than 50% cis content was the BinapthPONOPMoCl3 / methyl- and trimetylsilylmethlyl-Grignard reagents but only when run at 25 °C. xvi We were able to perform ROMP of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) with the molybdenum complex / Grignard reagents. However, while the fully polymerized product is extremely hard and transparent we could only achieve a soft nontransparent product, indicating incomplete polymerization.