Ligand-enabled and magnesium-activated hydrogenation with earth-abundant cobalt catalysts

Replacing expensive noble metals like Pt, Pd, Ir, Ru, and Rh with inexpensive earth-abundant metals like cobalt (Co) is attracting wider research interest in catalysis. Cobalt catalysts are now undergoing a renaissance in hydrogenation reactions. Herein, we describe a hydrogenation method for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and olefins with a magnesium-activated earth-abundant Co catalyst. When diketimine was used as a ligand, simple and inexpensive metal salts of CoBr2 in combination with magnesium showed high catalytic activity in the site-selective hydrogenation of challenging PAHs under mild conditions. Co-catalyzed hydrogenation enabled the reduction of two side aromatics of PAHs. A wide range of PAHs can be hydrogenated in a site-selective manner, which provides a cost-effective, clean, and selective strategy to prepare partially reduced polycyclic hydrocarbon motifs that are otherwise difficult to prepare by common methods. The use of well-defined diketimine-ligated Co complexes as precatalysts for selective hydrogenation of PAHs and olefins is also demonstrated.