Kempe et al. and Milstein et al. have recently advanced the dehydrogenative coupling methodology to synthesize pyrroles from secondary alcohols (e.g., 3) and β-amino alcohols (e.g., 4), using PNP-Ir (1) and PNN-Ru (2) pincer complexes, respectively. We herein present a DFT study to characterize the catalytic mechanism of these reactions. After precatalyst activation to give active 1A/2A, the transformation proceeds via four stages: 1A/2A-catalyzed alcohol (3) dehydrogenation to give ketone (11), base-facilitated C-N coupling of 11 and 4 to form an imine-alcohol intermediate (18), base-promoted cyclization of 18, and catalyst regeneration via H2 release from 1R/2R. For alcohol dehydrogenations, the bifunctional double hydrogen-transfer pathway is more favorable than that via β-hydride elimination. Generally, proton-transfer (H-transfer) shuttles facilitate various H-transfer processes in both systems. Notwithstanding, H-transfer shuttles play a much more crucial role in the PNP-Ir system than in the PNN-Ru system. Without H-transfer shuttles, the key barriers up to 45.9 kcal/mol in PNP-Ir system are too high to be accessible, while the corresponding barriers (<32.0 kcal/mol) in PNN-Ru system are not unreachable. Another significant difference between the two systems is that the addition of alcohol to 1A giving an alkoxo complex is endergonic by 8.1 kcal/mol, whereas the addition to 2A is exergonic by 8.9 kcal/mol. The thermodynamic difference could be the main reason for PNP-Ir system requiring lower catalyst loading than the PNN-Ru system. We discuss how the differences are resulted in terms of electronic and geometric structures of the catalysts and how to use the features in catalyst development.

Polyols pathway probed: Density functional theory computations reveal that the methyltrioxorhenium-catalyzed deoxydehydration of polyols follows pathway C, which is energetically more favorable than the previously proposed pathways A and B. In addition to serving as solvent/reductant, the alcohol also acts as a shuttle to greatly facilitate various hydrogen-transfer steps.

Density functional theory computations have been carried out to study the mechanism of hydrogenation-based transformation of dimethyl carbonate to methanol, catalyzed by Ru(II)PNN catalyst. The energetic results show that the catalytic transformation includes three sequential stages consistently involving the catalyst: (stage I) transformation of dimethyl carbonate (3) to methyl formate (5) and methanol; (stage II) transformation of methyl formate 5 to formaldehyde and methanol; (stage III) hydrogenation of formaldehyde to methanol. Stages I and II proceed similarly and follow three steps: hydrogen activation, formation of a hemiacetal intermediate via stepwise hydrogen transfer to dimethyl carbonate in stage I or methyl fomate in stage II, and subsequent decomposition of the hemiacetal intermediate to afford methanol. Hydrogenation via carbonyl insertion into the Ru-H bond is less favorable than the stepwise hydrogen-transfer mechanism. Decomposition of hemiacetal takes places by first breaking the hemiacetal O-H bond to give an alkoxide complex, followed by deprotonation of the benzylic arm ligand to the adjacent methoxy group. Comparing the hydrogenation steps in the three stages, hydrogenation in stage I is most difficult, that in stage II is less difficult, and that in stage III is easiest in terms of both kinetics and thermodynamics. This can be ascribed to the stronger electrophilicity of the carbonyl group in methyl formate or formaldehyde than that in dimethyl carbonate and fewer steric effects between the catalyst and methyl formate or formaldehyde than that between the catalyst and dimethyl carbonate. Thermodynamically, both stages I and II are uphill, but stage III is downhill significantly, which is the driving force for the catalytic transformation. The study indicates that the methanol product could facilitate the hydrogen activation involved in the transformation, implying that transformation could be accelerated by initially adding methanol.

The increasing concentration of CO2 is alarming for modern society and the reduction of CO2 into valuable products is the unique solution. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), constructed by organic linkers interconnected with metal (oxide) nodes, with high porosity and large surface area, have become an emerging class of electrocatalysts for reduction of CO2. Herein, the recent advancements in MOF‐based electrocatalysts for the reduction of CO2, abridged the recent strategies to enhance the performance are summarized and the structure–activity relationship is discussed to provide a comprehensive route for the rational design of novel catalysts. Moreover, the specially focused aspect is to summarize recent strategies of structure tuning, manipulating the electronic structure and enhancing the active site density to well exposed single‐atom active sites. In addition, some demerits and proposed future perspectives are also discussed.