DppfCuBH4: new reducing agents for the synthesis of ferrocene-functionalized metal nanoclusters

Meng Wang; Simin Li; Huijun Chen; Xueli Sun; Jing Sun; Yanyuan Jia; Shuo Guo; Cunfa Sun; Hui Shen

doi:10.1039/D3DT01461D

DppfCuBH₄: new reducing agents for the synthesis of ferrocene-functionalized metal nanoclusters†

Meng Wang,‡^ab Simin Li,‡^a Huijun Chen,‡^c Xueli Sun,^a Jing Sun,^a Yanyuan Jia,*^b Shuo Guo,^b Cunfa Sun

*^d and Hui Shen

*^a

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a College of Energy Materials and Chemistry, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China
E-mail: shen@imu.edu.cn

^b College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China
E-mail: jiayanyuan@imu.edu.cn

^c College of Food Science and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Wuzhou University, Guangxi, China

^d College of Materials Science and Engineering, Huaqiao University, Xiamen 361021, China
E-mail: Cunfa.SUN@hqu.edu.cn

Abstract

A facile synthesis of atomically precise metal nanoclusters, especially those decorated with functional groups, is the prerequisite for finding applications in special fields and studying structure-and-property relationships. The exploration of simple and efficient synthetic prototypes for introducing functional ligands (such as ferrocene) into cluster moieties is thus of high interest. In this work, a type of reducing agent of dppfCuBH₄ (dppf is 1,1′-bis(diphenyphosphino)ferrocene) is introduced for the first time to prepare ferrocene-functionalized metal nanoclusters. Two new clusters of [Ag₂₅Cu₄(dppf)₆(3-F-PhC [triple bond, length as m-dash] C)₁₂Cl₆]³⁺ (1) and [Ag₄(dppf)₅Cl₂]²⁺ (2) have been obtained from the simple synthetic method. The two compounds have been fully characterized by advanced techniques of electrospray ionization mass spectroscopy (ESI-MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis). The total structure of the clusters, as determined by X-ray single-crystal diffraction, describes the Ag₁₃@Ag₁₂Cu₄(dppf)₆(3-F-PhC [triple bond, length as m-dash] C)₁₂Cl₆ core–shell structure of 1 and [Ag₂Cl(dppf)₂]⁺-dppf-[Ag₂Cl(dppf)₂]⁺ polymeric structure of 2. This work opens the door to employing dppfCuBH₄ as a functional reducing agent to discover many underlying metal nanoclusters and even other nanomaterials which feature ferrocene-groups.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3DT01461D
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 16 May 2023
Accepted: 06 Jul 2023
First published: 07 Jul 2023

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Dalton Trans., 2023,52, 10332-10337

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DppfCuBH₄: new reducing agents for the synthesis of ferrocene-functionalized metal nanoclusters

M. Wang, S. Li, H. Chen, X. Sun, J. Sun, Y. Jia, S. Guo, C. Sun and H. Shen, Dalton Trans., 2023, 52, 10332 DOI: 10.1039/D3DT01461D

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