A well-studied heterogeneous
palladium(II) catalyst used for the
cycloisomerization of acetylenic acids is known to be susceptible
to deactivation through reduction. To gain a deeper understanding
of this deactivation process and to enable the design of a reactivation
strategy,
in situ
X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS)
was used. With this technique, changes in the palladium oxidation
state and coordination environment could be studied in close detail,
which provided experimental evidence that the deactivation was primarily
caused by triethylamine-promoted reduction of palladium(II) to metallic
palladium nanoparticles. Furthermore, it was observed that the choice
of the acetylenic acid substrate influenced the distribution between
palladium(II) and palladium(0) species in the heterogeneous catalyst
after the reaction. From the mechanistic insight gained through XAS,
an improved catalytic protocol was developed that did not suffer from
deactivation and allowed for more efficient recycling of the catalyst.