Recent Advances in the Metal‐Catalyzed Activation of Amide Bonds

The amide functional group is commonly found in peptides, proteins, pharmaceutical compounds, natural products, and polymers. The synthesis of amides is typically performed by using classical approaches that involve the reaction between a carboxylic acid and an amine in the presence of an activator. Amides are thought to be an inert functional group, because they are unsusceptible to nucleophile attack, owing to their low electrophilicity. The reason for this resistance is clear: the resonance stability of the amide bond. However, transition metal catalysis can circumvent this stability by selectively rupturing the N?C bond of the amide, thereby facilitating further cross‐coupling or other reactions. In this Focus Review, we discuss the recent advances in this area and present a summary of methods that have been developed for activating the amide N?C bond by using precious and non‐precious metals.     

Influence of alkali metal doping on surface properties and catalytic activity/selectivity of CaO catalysts in oxidative coupling of methane

Surface properties （viz. surface area, basicity/base strength distribution, and crystal phases） of alkali metal doped CaO （alkali metal/Ca= 0.1 and 0.4） catalysts and their catalytic activity/selectivity in oxidative coupling of methane （OCM） to higher hydrocarbons at different reaction conditions （viz. temperature, 700 and 750 ℃; CH4/O2 ratio, 4.0 and 8.0 and space velocity, 5140-20550 cm^3 ·g^-1·h^-1） have been investigated. The influence of catalyst calcination temperature on the activity/selectivity has also been investigated. The surface properties （viz. surface area, basicity/base strength distribution） and catalytic activity/selectivity of the alkali metal doped CaO catalysts are strongly influenced by the alkali metal promoter and its concentration in the alkali metal doped CaO catalysts. An addition of alkali metal promoter to CaO results in a large decrease in the surface area but a large increase in the surface basicity （strong basic sites） and the C2＋ selectivity and yield of the catalysts in the OCM process. The activity and selectivity are strongly influenced by the catalyst calcination temperature. No direct relationship between surface basicity and catalytic activity/selectivity has been observed. Among the alkali metal doped CaO catalysts, Na-CaO （Na/Ca = 0.1, before calcination） catalyst （calcined at 750 ℃）, showed best performance （C2＋ selectivity of 68.8% with 24.7% methane conversion）, whereas the poorest performance was shown by the Rb-CaO catalyst in the OCM process.     

Hydrogen bonding interaction between 1,4‐dioxane and water

This work reports an interaction of 1,4‐dioxane with one, two, and three water molecules using the density functional theory method at B3LYP/6‐311++G* level. Different conformers were studied and the most stable conformer of 1,4‐dioxane‐(water)_n (n = 1–3) complex has total energies ?384.1964038, ?460.6570694, and ?537.1032381 hartrees with one, two, and three water molecules, respectively. Corresponding binding energy (BE) for these three most stable structures is 6.23, 16.73, and 18.11 kcal/mol. The hydrogen bonding results in red shift in O? O stretching and C? C stretching modes of 1,4‐dioxane for the most stable conformer of 1,4‐dioxane with one, two, and three water molecules whereas there was a blue shift in C? O symmetric stretching and C? O asymmetric stretching modes of 1,4‐dioxane. The hydrogen bonding results in large red shift in bending mode of water and large blue shift in symmetric stretching and asymmetric stretching mode of water. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2010     

Computational study of glycine–(water)3 complex by density functional method

Glycine–(water)₃ complexes have been studied by means of B3LYP density functional method using 6-311++G* basis set. In the complex considered here, the three water molecule are either attached to the carboxylic group or bridge between the amino group and carboxylic group of glycine. Four such complexes are studied. Relaxation energies, two-, three- and four-body interaction energies are obtained by applying many-body analysis to know their role in binding energy of the complex. The results are compared with recent work on glycine–(water)₃ complex with group as proton donor [A. Chaudhari, P.K. Sahu, S.L. Lee, J. Chem. Phys. 120 (2004) 170]. In the most stable structure of glycine–(water)₃ complex, the three water molecules are attached to the carboxylic group of glycine and it is 5.3 kcal/mol lower in energy than that of the most stable structure reported earlier. The three-body term from water–water–water interaction in the most stable in this work and that reported earlier is unique since the distances between the water molecules are almost same. The two-body term from water–water interaction has significant contribution to the total two-body term when the distance between water molecules is less than 3 Å.