Self-assembled Cu(II) cluster from aerobic oxidation of Cu(I)Br with tris (triazolyl)methanol

Preeyanuch Sangtrirutnugul

   Multinuclear metal clusters often display interesting magnetic behaviors and enhanced catalytic activities through interactions among metal ions, making them promising candidates for high-performance single-molecule magnets (SMMs) and catalysts. However, the construction of multinuclear metal complexes via self-assembly reactions which involve multiple molecular building blocks coming together to form the lowest energy products has not been thoroughly investigated or well understood. This work investigates the self-assembled synthesis of hexa- and trinuclear Cu(II) clusters starting from Cu(I)Br and tris(4-benzyl-1,2,3-triazolyl)methanol (Htbtm) to gain insights into the Cu cluster formation, coordination mode of tbtm ligand, and magnetic properties of the resulting Cu(II) clusters.

   This research project was funded by Thailand Research Fund (grant number: RSA6080082) and mainly conducted at Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University. Magnetic measurements were carried out in collaboration with Dr. Serhiy Demeshko at Georg-August-University, Germany. Knowledge obtained from this work, particularly the Cu cluster formation and the coordination behavior of this type of triazole-alkoxy ligand, is expected to benefit coordination chemists, academics, and chemistry students in general. In addition, our research group employed the synthetic method reported in this work to generate other related trinuclear Cu(II) catalysts for aerobic alcohol oxidation, in which the results were recently published in Dalton Transactions (2020). Associated SDG goals are Quality Education (4) and Partnerships for the Goals (17).