Reduction-resistant and reduction-catalytic double-crown nickel nanoclusters

In this work, an attempt to synthesize zero-valent Ni nanoclusters using the Brust method resulted in an unexpected material, Ni-6(SCH2CH2Ph)(12), which is a nanoscale Ni(II)-phenylethanethiolate complex and a hexameric, double-crown-like structure, as determined by a series of characterizations, including mass spectrometry (MS), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectrometry (XPS). An interesting finding is that this complex is resistant to aqueous BH4-. Investigations into other metal-phenylethanethiolate and Ni-thiolate complexes reveal that this property is not universal and appears only in complexes with a double-crown-like structure, indicating the correlation between this interesting property and the complexes' special structure. Another interesting finding is that the reduction-resistant Ni-6(SCH2CH2Ph)(12) exhibits remarkably higher catalytic activity than a well-known catalyst, Au-25(SCH2CH2Ph)(18), toward the reduction of 4-nitrophenol at low temperature (e.g., 0 degrees C). This work will help stimulate more research on the properties and applications of less noble metal nanoclusters.