Zhang, S.; Kochovski, Z.; Lee, H.-C.; Lu, Y.; Zhang, H.; Zhang, J.; Sun, J.; Yuan, J.: Ionic organic cage-encapsulating phase-transferable metal clusters. Chemical Science 10 (2019), p. 1450-1456
10.1039/C8SC04375B
Open Access Version
Abstract:
Exploration of metal clusters (MCs) adaptive to both aqueous and oil phases without disturbing their size is promising for a broad scope of applications. The state-of-the-art approach via ligand-binding may perturb MCs' size due to varied metal–ligand binding strength when shuttling between solvents of different polarity. Herein, we applied physical confinement of a series of small noble MCs (<1 nm) inside ionic organic cages (I-Cages), which by means of anion exchange enables reversible transfer of MCs between aqueous and hydrophobic solutions without varying their ultrasmall size. Moreover, the MCs@I-Cage hybrid serves as a recyclable, reaction-switchable catalyst featuring high activity in liquid-phase NH3BH3 (AB) hydrolysis reaction with a turnover frequency (TOF) of 115 min−1.