First Row Transition Metal Catalysts for Selective Hydrocarbon Oxidation

Enzymes containing multi-nuclear copper clusters play an important role in bioenergetics by facilitating multi-electron redox processes. For example, particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO), which is a copper containing enzyme found in methanotrophs, catalyzes the partial oxidation of methane to methanol. Structural studies have resulted in suggestions that the active site in pMMO is a dinuclear Cu(II) cluster (a trinuclear copper cluster has also been suggested) that can mediate both dioxygen activation and oxygen atom transfer.

We have been developing multi-nuclear copper and cobalt complexes to study for the catalytic partial oxidation of hydrocarbons. For example, we have prepared a series of multi-copper complexes that possess CuII2-OH)CuII and CuII33-O) cores (see Scheme 1 for representative examples). The main aim of this project is to investigate the catalytic activity of these complexes for alkane oxidation. The use of multinuclear copper catalysts is a promising strategy to achieve selective two-electron oxidation of organic molecules using one-electron redox steps.

hydrocarbon_oxidation