Frustrated Lewis pairs: encounter complexes in an ionic liquid

DOI

Frustrated Lewis Pairs (FLPs) are combinations of bulky Lewis acids and bases, which cannot form acid-base complexes due to steric hindrance. They are capable of metal-free H2 activation, by H2 interacting with an "encounter complex" - a transient association of a Lewis acid and base. In benzene, encounter complexes are impossible to detect by simple NMR studies, but were detected by neutron scattering on SANDALS, combined with modelling and structure refinement with EPSR, as reported by our group (L. C. Brown, et al., Chem Commun, 2018, 54, 8689). We found that ionic liquids may stabilise encounter complexes, increasing their lifetime and concentration compared to benzene. Here, we study a phosphine/borane FLP in an ionic liquid, aiming to probe the encounter complex structure, compare it to that in benzene, and use this knowledge to optimise a system for metal-free hydrogenations.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.101133455
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/101133455
Provenance
Creator Dr Sabrina Gaertner; Miss Emily Byrne; Mr Martin Gillespie; Miss Anne McGrogan; Dr Leila Moura; Professor John Holbrey; Miss Lucy Brown; Dr Silvia Imberti; Professor Gosia Swadzba-Kwasny; Dr Tristan Youngs; Dr Oliver Alderman
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2022
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Chemistry; Natural Sciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2019-06-14T08:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2019-06-19T08:00:00Z