Cover Feature: Few‐layer Black Phosphorous Catalyzes Radical Additions to Alkenes Faster than Low‐valence Metals (ChemCatChem 8/2020)

Isolated Fe(III)-O Sites Catalyze the Hydrogenation of Acetylene in Ethylene Flows under Front-End Industrial Conditions

[EN] The search for simple, earth-abundant, cheap, and nontoxic metal catalysts able to perform industrial hydrogenations is a topic of interest, transversal to many catalytic processes. Here, we show that isolated FeIII¿O sites on solids are able to dissociate and chemoselectively transfer H2 to acetylene in an industrial process. For that, a novel, robust, and highly crystalline metal¿organic framework (MOF), embedding FeIII¿OH2 single sites within its pores, was prepared in multigram scale and used as an efficient catalyst for the hydrogenation of 1% acetylene in ethylene streams under front-end conditions. Cutting-edge X-ray crystallography allowed the resolution of the crystal structur…

Few-layer Black Phosphorous Catalyzes Radical Additions to Alkenes Faster than Low-valence Metals

Abstract The substitution of catalytic metals by p‐block main elements has a tremendous impact not only in the fundamentals but also in the economic and ecological fingerprint of organic reactions. Here we show that few‐layer black phosphorous (FL‐BP), a recently discovered and now readily available 2D material, catalyzes different radical additions to alkenes with an initial turnover frequency (TOF0) up to two orders of magnitude higher than representative state‐of‐the‐art metal complex catalysts at room temperature. The corresponding electron‐rich BP intercalation compound (BPIC) KP6 shows a nearly twice TOF0 increase with respect to FL‐BP. This increase in catalytic activity respect to t…

CCDC 1835021: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

Related Article: María Tejeda-Serrano, Marta Mon, Bethany Ross, Francisco Gonell, Jesus Ferrando-Soria, Avelino Corma, Antonio Leyva-Perez, Donatella Armentano, Emilio Pardo|2018|J.Am.Chem.Soc.|140|8827|doi:10.1021/jacs.8b04669

Cover Feature: Few‐layer Black Phosphorous Catalyzes Radical Additions to Alkenes Faster than Low‐valence Metals

The Cover Feature shows how phosphorene can catalyse different radical additions to alkenes. These catalysts have an initial turnover frequency up to two orders of magnitude higher than representative state–of–the–art metal complex catalysts at room temperature. In their Full Paper, M. Tejeda-Serrano et al. describe how the electron–richness of the 2D material, either phosphorene or graphene, parallels the catalytic activity of different low-valence iron compounds as metal catalysts. These results showcase the advantages of substituting metals by p–block main-group elements not only because of their positive economic and ecological fingerprint, but also because of their higher catalytic eff…