Electrocatalyst Decomposition Pathways: Torsional Strain in a Second Sphere Proton Relay Shuts Off CO2RR in a Re(2,2’-bipyridyl)(CO)3X Type Electrocatalyst
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Group 7 tris(carbonyl) bipyridine complexes have been well explored as important CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) electrocatalysts and now represent an excellent platform for catalyst design. Recent synthetic focus has been on the installation of proton sources/relays within the primary/secondary coordination sphere. These proton sources have been implicated in directly assisting catalysis by acting as shuttles for proton transfer or through the stabilization of transition states through hydrogen bonding. Herein, we report a new ligand system for CO2RR electrocatalysts, which features an aryl amine appended to a quinoline-bipyridine core. While the geometrical arrangement of the aryl amine seems amenable to assisting CO2RR electrocatalysis, we find, through spectroelectrochemical and chemical reduction studies, the torsional strain imposed on the ligand induces a structural reorganization through loss of a hydrogen atom radical. This new complex, which utilizes the anionic nitrogen as a donor atom, and other Re complexes with the same coordination motif have been found to be entirely inactive for CO2RR. Subsequent reduction yields hydrogenation of the complex through dearomatization of the quinoline backbone concomitant with decomposition products. While the electrocatalytic capability of the reported complexes is moderate, the study represents an important investigation into the deactivation of CO2RR electrocatalysts as a consequence of typical proton shuttle moieties and guides future ligand design by highlighting an oft overlooked structural parameter.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".