Construction of tetrahedral chiral-at-metal complexes towards asymmetric light-driven redox catalysis

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In one year research, I mainly focus on construction and resolution of redox-active chiral-at-nickel(II) and chiral-at-cobalt(II) complexes.First, I constructed two tetrahedral chiral-at-nickel(II) complexes using an unsymmetrical, achiral tridentate ligand and characterized them by NMR, ESI-MS, single-crystal XRD and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. The structural information was carefully elucidated. The complexes adopt a tetrahedral geometry and exhibit redox activity as well as visible-light absorption. Also, they are capable of ligand exchange for substrate activation.Second, I succeeded in spontaneous resolution of S/R-[NiL(ClLi(thf)2)] complex to conglomerate crystals at low temperature. I optimized the crystallization conditions and elucidated the crystallographic structure. I found that hydrogen bondings are essential to achieve spontaneous resolution. Starting from achiral building blocks, the ligands and nickel ions assemble chiral-at-metal complexes, 1D chiral helices, 3D chiral suprastructure and finally homochiral crystals in a highly asymmetric manner. This is related to the origin of homochirality in biological systems in ancient earth and sheds light on the concept of crystal engineering.I also successfully constructed a tetrahedral chiral-at-cobalt(II) complex and charactered it by NMR, ESI-MS, single-crystal XRD, UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. Together with silver salts, the complex was found to be capable for carbon-carbon bond cleavage of 1,2-diarylethylenediamine. The reaction condition is under optimization currently.