Influence of surface functionalities on Au/C catalysts for oxidative homocoupling of phenylboronic acid

Parmentier, Tanja E., Lazaridou, Anna, Cartwright, Joseph, Davies, Ben, Dawson, Simon, Malta, Grazia, Freakley, Simon, Davies, Thomas E., Morgan, David J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6571-5731, Kondrat, Simon, Kiely, Christopher J., Pattisson, Samuel, Dummer, Nicholas F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0946-6304 and Hutchings, Graham J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8885-1560 2025. Influence of surface functionalities on Au/C catalysts for oxidative homocoupling of phenylboronic acid. ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering 10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c02262

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Abstract

The formation of C–C bonds through coupling reactions is an important industrial process. The ability of Au to catalyze such reactions has been reported, with both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyst examples. Previous work has shown that carbon-supported cationic and nanoparticulate Au are active for the homocoupling of phenylboronic acid to biphenyl. However, the stability of supported cationic Au is short-lived, and the formed nanoparticles were suggested to be the active species. Through the synthesis of two types of supported cationic Au catalysts, utilizing either aqua regia or acetone solvents, we show that both catalysts develop nanoparticulate Au species early in the reaction; however, only the aqua regia prepared catalyst is active. We ascribe the activity of the aqua regia prepared Au catalyst to excess Cl and the presence of C–Cl surface species in combination with Au. Carbon treated with aqua regia was inactive; however, when used as a support for Au deposited with acetone or via a sol immobilization method, activity was comparable to the aqua regia prepared catalyst. The role of C–Cl and Au nanoparticles is discussed with respect to their correlation to the biphenyl yield, which is shown to be significant only when the C–Cl species are present on the catalyst.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Chemistry Research Institutes & Centres > Cardiff Catalysis Institute (CCI)
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Start Date: 2025-06-13
Publisher:	American Chemical Society
ISSN:	2168-0485
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 June 2025
Last Modified:	27 Jun 2025 15:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/179371

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