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Updated: Dec 26, 2025

Heterogeneous Removal of Water-Soluble Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalyst from Aqueous Media Via Host-Guest Interaction
Published on: August 23, 2018
Structural evolution of the Ru-bms complex to the real water oxidation catalyst of Ru-bda: the bite angle matters
Jing Yang1, Bin Liu1, Lele Duan1
1Department of Chemistry, Shenzhen Grubbs Institute and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Energy Materials for Electric Power, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China. duanll@sustech.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Ru-Based complexes have advanced the study of molecular water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) both in catalysis and mechanism. The electronic effect has always been considered as an essential factor for the catalyst properties while less attention has been focused on the bite angle effect on water oxidation catalysis. The Ru-bda ([Ru(bda)(pic)2]; bda2- = 2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-dicarboxylate; pic = 4-picoline) catalyst is one of the most active WOCs and it has a largely distorted octahedral configuration with an O-Ru-O bite angle of 123°. Herein, we replaced the carboxylate (-COO-) groups of bda2- with two methylenesulfonate (-CH2SO3-) groups and prepared a negatively charged ligand, bms2- (2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-dimethanesulfonate), and the Ru-bms complex [Ru(bms)(pic)2]. The O-Ru-O bite angle changed from 123° in Ru-bda to 84° in Ru-bms, leading to a dramatic influence on the catalytic behavior. Systematic analysis of the reaction intermediates suggested that Ru-bms transformed all the way to Ru-bdavia oxidative decomposition under CeIV-driven water oxidation conditions.
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