Reduction of Dinitrogen to Ammonia and Hydrazine on Low-Valent Ruthenium Complexes

Leslie D Field; Hsiu L Li; P Manohari Abeysinghe; Mohan Bhadbhade; Scott J Dalgarno; Ruaraidh D McIntosh

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.8b02850

Reduction of Dinitrogen to Ammonia and Hydrazine on Low-Valent Ruthenium Complexes

Inorg Chem. 2019 Feb 4;58(3):1929-1934. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.8b02850. Epub 2019 Jan 17.

Authors

Leslie D Field¹, Hsiu L Li¹, P Manohari Abeysinghe¹, Mohan Bhadbhade², Scott J Dalgarno³, Ruaraidh D McIntosh³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry , UNSW Sydney , Sydney , NSW 2052 , Australia.
² Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre , UNSW Sydney , Sydney , NSW 2052 , Australia.
³ School of EPS-Chemistry , Heriot-Watt University , Edinburgh EH14 4AS , Scotland , United Kingdom.

PMID: 30652862
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.8b02850

Abstract

The ruthenium(0) dinitrogen complexes [Ru(N₂)(PP₃^R)] [PP₃^R = P(CH₂CH₂PR₂)₃; R = ⁱPr or Cy] react with triflic acid and other strong acids to afford mixtures of ammonia and hydrazine. In this reaction, Ru(0) is oxidized to Ru(II), and depending on the solvent, Ru(II) benzene or triflate complexes are isolated and characterized from the reactions with triflic acid as the final metal-containing products from the reaction. The Ru(II) products are isolated and reduced back to Ru(0) dinitrogen complexes providing a cycle for the reduction of coordinated dinitrogen.