Characterization of an Fe≡N–NH<sub>2</sub>Intermediate Relevant to Catalytic N<sub>2</sub>Reduction to NH<sub>3</sub>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The ability of certain transition metals to mediate the reduction of N2 to NH3 has attracted broad interest in the biological and inorganic chemistry communities. Early transition metals such as Mo and W readily bind N2 and mediate its protonation at one or more N atoms to furnish M(N(x)H(y)) species that can be characterized and, in turn, extrude NH3. By contrast, the direct protonation of Fe-N2 species to Fe(N(x)H(y)) products that can be characterized has been elusive. Herein, we show that addition of acid at low temperature to [(TPB)Fe(N2)][Na(12-crown-4)] results in a new S = 1/2 Fe species. EPR, ENDOR, Mössbauer, and EXAFS analysis, coupled with a DFT study, unequivocally assign this new species as [(TPB)Fe≡N-NH2](+), a doubly protonated hydrazido(2-) complex featuring an Fe-to-N triple bond. This unstable species offers strong evidence that the first steps in Fe-mediated nitrogen reduction by [(TPB)Fe(N2)][Na(12-crown-4)] can proceed along a distal or "Chatt-type" pathway. A brief discussion of whether subsequent catalytic steps may involve early or late stage cleavage of the N-N bond, as would be found in limiting distal or alternating mechanisms, respectively, is also provided.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".