Towards catalytic uranyl hydrocarbon C-H bond cleavage

Purkis, Jamie M., Arnold, Polly L., Rutkauskaite, Ryte, Love, Jason B. and Austin, Jonathan (2021) Towards catalytic uranyl hydrocarbon C-H bond cleavage. Uranium Science 2021 (UScience2021).

Abstract

Depleted uranium (DU) is a widely untapped resource, with ca. 1.5m tonnes stored globally in 2015 from nuclear power. The need to better understand the chemistry involved in its safe storage has contributed to a renaissance in the field of actinide chemistry, with uranium and its compounds experiencing a myriad of exciting recent developments.1

The irradiation of uranyl (UVIO22+) compounds with visible or UV light to affect chemical transformations – uranyl photocatalysis – is one such area. Shining light on solutions containing uranyl salts results in the destruction of aqueous, organic pollutants or the fluorination of inert C-H bonds,2 as the photo-excited state of the uranyl ion can effect C-H bond cleavage by H-atom abstraction, Figure 1.

Here, we show that chemoselective, controlled and benign oxidation of C-H bonds using photoexcited uranyl complexes is possible, including in organic solvent for the first time.3 This includes transformation of common contaminants into industrially useful hydrocarbons, and we present our ongoing efforts to further enhance the selectivity of these transformations and the underpinning mechanics of these reactions.

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Contributors

Author: Jamie M. Purkis

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