Engineering the surface of cuprous oxide via surface coordination for efficient catalysis on aerobic oxidation of benzylic alcohols under ambient conditions

The surface organometallic chemistry or surface coordination is considered as an important tool for modifying the surface properties and electronic structure of metal centres to achieve enhancement in catalysis. In this piece of work, we report how cuprous oxide (Cu2O) was turned into an efficient catalyst alongside with 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) and N-methylimidazole (NMI) for catalytic aerobic oxidation of benzylic alcohols into aldehydes under ambient conditions through surface coordination. The coordination not only enhanced the capability of O2-activation via the ligation of NMI to the metal sites, but also the surface structure was engineered in such a way that a vacancy was created for O2-binding, one of the key steps as revealed by DFT calculations. Both experimental and theoretical results suggested that the coordination to the metal sites at the surface by NMI activated cuprous oxide via breaking up its oxo bridge at the surface to form hydroxyl group to allow O2-binding, and increased also the electron density on the metal site to enhance its capability of O2 activation. A plausible mechanism was proposed by using a variety of spectroscopic and electrochemical techniques as well as DFT calculations. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.