Open AccessStrategies for Enhancing the Rate Constant of C–H Bond Cleavage by Concerted Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer
Author(s) -
Elvira R. Sayfutyarova,
Yan Choi Lam,
Sharon HammesSchiffer
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of the american chemical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 7.115
H-Index - 612
eISSN - 1520-5126
pISSN - 0002-7863
DOI - 10.1021/jacs.9b06849
Subject(s) - chemistry , proton coupled electron transfer , carboxylate , electron transfer , proton , reaction rate constant , photochemistry , redox , substituent , intramolecular force , acceptor , intermolecular force , electron acceptor , equilibrium constant , electron donor , bond cleavage , computational chemistry , molecule , stereochemistry , catalysis , inorganic chemistry , organic chemistry , kinetics , physics , quantum mechanics , condensed matter physics
Recently selective C-H bond cleavage under mild conditions with weak oxidants was reported for fluorenyl-benzoates. This mechanism is based on multi-site concerted proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) involving intermolecular electron transfer to an outer-sphere oxidant coupled to intramolecular proton transfer to a well-positioned proton acceptor. The electron transfer driving force depends predominantly on the oxidant, and the proton transfer driving force depends mainly on the basicity of the carboxylate, which is influenced by the substituent on the benzoate fragment. Experiments showed that the rate constants are much more sensitive to the carboxylate basicity than to the redox potential of the oxidant. Herein a vibronically nonadiabatic PCET theory is used to explain how changing the driving force for the electron and proton transfer components of the reaction through varying the oxidant and the substituent, respectively, impacts the PCET rate constant. In addition to increasing the driving force for proton transfer, enhancing the basicity of the carboxylate also decreases the equilibrium proton donor-acceptor distance, thereby facilitating the sampling of shorter proton donor-acceptor distances. This additional effect arising from the strong dependence of proton transfer on the proton donor-acceptor distance provides an explanation for the greater sensitivity of the rate constant to the carboxylate basicity than to the redox potential of the oxidant. These fundamental insights have broad implications for developing new strategies to activate C-H bonds, specifically by designing systems with shorter equilibrium proton donor-acceptor distances.