Dioxygen Activation by Internally Aromatic Metallacycle: Crystallographic Structure and Mechanistic Investigations.

Mononuclear metal-peroxo species are invoked as the key intermediates in metalloenzymatic or synthetic catalysis. However, either transience or sluggishness reactivity of synthetic analogs of metal-peroxo species impedes our understanding of oxygen activation mechanism. Herein, we designed and characterized a dioxygen-derived mononuclear osmium-peroxo complex, in which the peroxo ligand is stabilized by internally aromatic metallacycle. We demonstrate that the osmium-peroxo species shows catalytic activity toward promoterless alcohol dehydrogenations. Furthermore, computational studies provide a new mechanism for the osmium-peroxo-mediated alcohol oxidation, starting with the concerted double-hydrogen transfer and followed by the generation of osmium-oxo species. Interestingly, the internally aromatic metallacycle also plays a vital role in catalysis, which mediates the hydrogen transfer from osmium center to the distal oxygen atom of Os-OOH moiety, thus facilitating the Os-OOH→Os=O conversion. We expect that these insights will advance the development of aromatic metallacycle toward aerobic oxidation catalysis.

[3+2] cycloaddition reaction of metallacyclopropene with nitrosonium ion: isolation of aromatic metallaisoxazole.

The synthesis of metallaisoxazole by the [3+2] cycloaddition reaction of metallacyclopropene with nitrosonium tetra-fluoroborate has been achieved under mild conditions. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectra, X-ray crystallographic analysis, and density functional theory calculations all suggest that the metallaisoxazole exhibits an aromatic character.