Cu(I)-Induced ‘Click Reaction’ Involving Coordination and Covalent Assembly of Hybrid Borates for the Electrocatalytic CO2 Reduction
Graphical Abstract
A facile synthetic method is developed to synthesize a large family of pyrazole molecule-protected borates containing cyclic eight-membered B4O4-ring as corns, in a rapid and precise manner under mild conditions. The obtained borates proved to be good electrocatalytic catalysts for CO2 reduction reaction towards HCOOH and C2H4.
Abstract
The design and synthesis of hybrid borates by the organic ligand modification method are urgent and undeveloped areas of research. It is difficult to directly integrate organoboronic acids within inorganic borate chemistry by adopting the traditional preparation approaches. This work reports a facile synthetic method to synthesize a large family of pyrazole molecule-protected borates in a rapid and precise manner under mild conditions. A unique cyclic eight-membered B4O4-ring has been identified as the cluster core for all these hybrid borates with two different conformations (boat and crown). This strategy can be applied to a system of pyrazolyl molecules to generate such hybrid borates in two independent routes from organoboronic or inorganic boric acids. Furtherly, the mechanism of ‘click reaction’ between boric acid and pyrazole induced by copper ions has been proposed based on the synthetic conditions and the structure of intermediate. Due to the bimetallic Cu sites and the functional surfaces, these materials can be used as electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction reaction and efficiently enhance the selectivity of HCOOH and C2H4. Our strategy can be regarded as a typical template technique for organic molecule-protected borates.
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
Deposition Numbers 2357861 (for MePzBor-3Br), 2357862 (for MePzBor-3Cl), 2357863 (for MePzBor-3I), 2357864 (for PhPzBor-4Br), 2357865 (for PhPzBor-4Cl), 2357866 (for PhPzBor-4I), 2357867 (for PzBor-1Br), 2357868 (for PzBor-1Cl), 2357869 (for PzBor-1I), 2357870 (for PzBor-5), 2357871 (for PzBor-6), 2357872 (for PzQiBor-2Cl), 2357873 (fragment b) contain the supplementary crystallographic data for this paper. These data can be obtained free of charge via www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/data_request/cif, or by emailing [email protected].