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Updated: Oct 23, 2025

Preparation of Polyoxometalate-based Photo-responsive Membranes for the Photo-activation of Manganese Oxide Catalysts
Published on: August 7, 2018
Evaluation of Manganese Cubanoid Clusters for Water Oxidation Catalysis: From Well-Defined Molecular Coordination
Soosan Hosseinmardi1, Andreas Scheurer1, Frank W Heinemann1
1Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Inorganic Chemistry, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Egerlandstraße 1, 91058, Erlangen, Germany.
Abstract:
With a view to developing multimetallic molecular catalysts that mimic the oxygen-evolving catalyst (OEC) in Nature's photosystem II, the synthesis of various dicubanoid manganese clusters is described and their catalytic activity investigated for water oxidation in basic, aqueous solution. Pyridinemethanol-based ligands are known to support polynuclear and cubanoid structures in manganese coordination chemistry. The chelators 2,6-pyridinedimethanol (H2 L1 ) and 6-methyl-2-pyridinemethanol (HL2 ) were chosen to yield polynuclear manganese complexes; namely, the tetranuclear defective dicubanes [MnII 2 MnIII 2 (HL1 )4 (OAc)4 (OMe)2 ] and [MnII 2 MnIII 2 (HL1 )6 (OAc)2 ] (OAc)2 ⋅2 H2 O, as well as the octanuclear-dicubanoid [MnII 6 MnIII 2 (L2 )4 (O)2 (OAc)10 (HOMe/OH2 )2 ]⋅3MeOH⋅MeCN. In freshly prepared solutions, polynuclear species were detected by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, whereas X-band electron paramagnetic resonance studies in dilute, liquid solution suggested the presence of divalent mononuclear Mn species with g values of 2. However, the magnetochemical investigation of the complexes' solutions by the Evans technique confirmed a haphazard combination of manganese coordination complexes, from mononuclear to polynuclear species. Subsequently, the newly synthesized and characterized manganese molecular complexes were employed as precursors to prepare electrode-deposited films in a buffer-free solution to evaluate and compare their stability and catalytic activity for water oxidation electrocatalysis.
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