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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Synthesis of a Water-soluble Metal–Organic Complex Array
Published on: October 8, 2016
Photoexcited state chemistry of metal-oxygen complexes
Claudio Saracini1, Shunichi Fukuzumi, Yong-Min Lee
1Department of Chemistry and Nano Science, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Korea. fukuzumi@chem.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp yomlee@ewha.ac.kr wwnam@ewha.ac.kr.
Abstract:
Recent advances on the excited state chemistry of metal-oxygen synthetic complexes based on earth-abundant metals such as copper, cobalt, and manganese are reviewed to show a much enhanced reactivity of the photoexcited states as compared with their relative ground states. Mononuclear copper(ii)-superoxide and dinuclear copper(ii)-peroxo complexes underwent copper-oxygen bond cleavage, dioxygen release, and copper(i)/dioxygen rebinding upon photoexcitation at low temperature. Photoirradiation of the cobalt-oxygen compound [(TAML)CoIV(O)]2- (6) (TAML = tetraamidomacrocyclic ligand) at 5 °C yielded a cobalt-oxygen excited state with 0.6(1) ns lifetime, showing a high reactivity in the bimolecular electron-transfer oxidations of m-xylene and anisole. An extremely long-lived excited state was generated upon photoexcitation of a manganese(iv)-oxo complex binding two Sc(OTf)3 molecules, which enabled the hydroxylation of benzene.
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