Highly active dinuclear cobalt complexes for solvent-free cycloaddition of CO2 to epoxides at ambient pressure

Zafar A K Khattak; Hussein A Younus; Nazir Ahmad; Habib Ullah; Suleman Suleman; Md Shahadat Hossain; Mirella Elkadi; Francis Verpoort

doi:10.1039/c9cc02626f

Highly active dinuclear cobalt complexes for solvent-free cycloaddition of CO₂ to epoxides at ambient pressure

Chem Commun (Camb). 2019 Jul 11;55(57):8274-8277. doi: 10.1039/c9cc02626f.

Authors

Zafar A K Khattak¹, Hussein A Younus², Nazir Ahmad³, Habib Ullah¹, Suleman Suleman¹, Md Shahadat Hossain⁴, Mirella Elkadi⁵, Francis Verpoort⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China. francis.verpoort@ghent.ac.kr and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China.
² State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China. francis.verpoort@ghent.ac.kr and Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Fayoum University, Fayoum 63514, Egypt. hay00@fayoum.edu.eg.
³ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China. francis.verpoort@ghent.ac.kr and Department of Chemistry, G. C. University Lahore, 54000, Pakistan.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China. francis.verpoort@ghent.ac.kr and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China and Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Cumilla University, Cumilla 3506, Bangladesh.
⁵ College of Arts and Sciences, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, PO Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China. francis.verpoort@ghent.ac.kr and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China and National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Lenin Avenue 30, 634050 Tomsk, Russian Federation and College of Arts and Sciences, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, PO Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

PMID: 31246182
DOI: 10.1039/c9cc02626f

Abstract

Dinuclear Co-based catalysts are used for the coupling reaction of epoxides and CO2 in the presence of a cocatalyst. The easily recyclable catalysts efficiently complete the coupling of CO2 with various epoxides into industrially important cyclic carbonates at low catalyst loading and displayed high catalytic activity under relatively low CO2 pressure and solvent-free conditions. The maximum TON (168 600) and TOF (3333 h-1) obtained in this work are the highest among the reported Co-complexes.