Half‐sandwich Ir (III) and Rh (III) complexes as catalysts for water oxidation with double‐site

A series of neutral binuclear iridium and rhodium complexes were synthesized based on bis‐imine ligands under mild conditions. These half‐sandwich late transition metal complexes were isolated in good yields and characterized by elemental analysis, ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, HR‐MS, and FT‐IR spectroscopies, and the solid state structure of complexes 1 and 2 were further confirmed by single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) characterization indicated that the complex 1 has the best catalyst for water oxidation process with TOF of 0.8 s^?1 at low overpotential of 0.325 V in methanol‐phosphate buffer. The proposed double‐site water oxidation mechanism had been also speculated .