Epoxides are an important class of industrial chemicals that have been used as chemical intermediates. Catalytic epoxidation of olefins affords an interesting production technology. We found a widely usable green route to the production of epoxides: A silicotungstate compound, [gamma-SiW10O34(H2O)2]4-, is synthesized by protonation of a divacant, lacunary, Keggin-type polyoxometalate of [gamma-SiW10O36]8- and exhibits high catalytic performance for the epoxidation of various olefins, including propylene, with a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) oxidant at 305 kelvin. The effectiveness of this catalyst is evidenced by >/=99% selectivity to epoxide, >/=99% efficiency of H2O2 utilization, high stereospecificity, and easy recovery of the catalyst from the homogeneous reaction mixture.

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Rhodium-diene complexes with the Tp iPr ligand, Tp iPr Rh(diene) (Tp iPr ) hydridotris(3,5-diisopropylpyrazolyl)borate; diene ) 1,5-cyclooctadiene (cod) (1), norbornadiene (nbd) (2)), are prepared by treatment of [Rh(µ-Cl)(diene)] 2 with KTp iPr or TlTp iPr . The structure of 1, characterized by X-ray crystallography, contains the κ 2 -coordinated Tp iPr ligand, and its central Rh atom adopts a square-planar geometry, whereas the unit cell of 2 contains two independent molecules: a square-planar structure with a κ 2 -coordinated Tp iPr ligand similar to 1 and a trigonal-bipyramidal one with a κ 3 -coordinated Tp iPr ligand. Although 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy does not provide any information concerning the coordination geometry due to the interconversion between the square-planar and trigonal-bipyramidal structures, which occurs at a rate much faster than the NMR time scale, IR analysis reveals that the bands observed around 2470 and 2540 cm -1 are assigned to the B-H stretching vibrations of the square-planar and trigonal-bipyramidal structures, respectively. Thus, the ν(B-H) value can be used as an indicator of the hapticity of a Tp iPr ligand (κ 2 (∼2470 cm -1 ) vs κ 3 (>2530 cm -1 )) as compared with related Tp iPr ML n -type complexes.

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