New Breakthrough in Alternating Current Synthesis Chemistry by Wuhan University Research Team
TapTechNews July 12th news, on July 12th Beijing time, Science magazine online published the latest research paper of Professor Lei Aiwen's team from the Institute of Advanced Studies of Wuhan University and the College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences on alternating current synthesis chemistry, titled Programmed alternating current optimization of Cu-catalyzed C-H bond transformations.
Zeng Li, a specially appointed associate researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Wuhan University, Yang Qinghong, a doctoral student in the College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, and Wang Jianxing, a master's student at the Institute of Advanced Studies, are the co-first authors of the paper, and Professor Lei Aiwen is the sole corresponding author, and Wuhan University is the first affiliated unit.
According to the official introduction of Wuhan University, the new technology of synthetic electrochemistry is one of the top ten emerging technologies in the field of chemistry in 2023 evaluated by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Because of its characteristics of being green, safe and low energy consumption, the new technology of synthetic electrochemistry is expected to develop into a new productive force to solve the problems of environmental pollution, safety production risks and high energy consumption caused by the current productive force driven by fossil energy.
This emerging synthetic technology mainly uses direct current (DC) as the driving force and controls the chemical reaction process by adjusting the current or voltage. Alternating current (AC) has the characteristics of polarity reversal and periodic fluctuations, and has the advantage of more adjustable electrical parameters such as waveform, frequency and duty cycle, providing unlimited potential for realizing precise material manufacturing. However, the introduction of more dimensional electrical parameters into the electrochemical synthesis reaction will lead to an exponential increase in the reaction conditions that can be optimized, greatly increasing the research difficulty. Therefore, so far the alternating current synthesis technology is still in its embryonic stage, and only a few simple application studies have been reported.
Professor Lei Aiwen's team has been working on green synthesis chemistry for more than 15 years, and this study pioneered and developed the programmable waveform alternating current (pAC) synthesis technology and achieved the copper-catalyzed hydrogen evolution oxidative cross-coupling reaction.
By programming the electrical parameters (frequency, current and duty cycle) of the alternating current waveform, a customized alternating current signal can be obtained. The electrical signals of different editing modes not only promote the recycling of the copper catalyst under electrolytic conditions, but also precisely regulate the formation of copper-bound carbon radical species and carbon-copper active species of the copper catalyst, respectively.
In addition, the Lei Aiwen team developed an in situ electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy - alternating current electrolysis combined characterization technique, and observed for the first time the change rule of the dynamic regulation of the activity of copper-catalyzed species by different alternating current signals. Based on the programmable alternating current synthesis technology, the research team successfully achieved the direct carbon-hydrogen bond oxidative coupling reaction and oxidative bifunctionalization reaction of activated alkanes catal yzed by copper, and both of these two types of reactions showed poor reactivity under traditional oxidant conditions and direct current oxidation conditions.
Wuhan University said that this study realizes the precise regulation of metal-catalyzed species in the alternating current electrolysis environment and solves the problem that transition metal catalysts are prone to precipitation and deactivation at the cathode and must use a separate cell. The appearance of the programmable waveform alternating current synthesis technology will provide great assistance to the new synthetic reaction of the development of metal catalysis coupled with electrocatalysis in the more extensive application fields such as green material manufacturing, and provide new impetus for the greening, intelligentization and high-end of chemical engineering.
TapTechNews attached the paper link:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0875