Molecular Designs for Controlling the Local Environments around Metal Ions

CONSPECTUS: The functions of metal complexes are directly linked to the local environment in which they are housed; modifications to the local environment (or secondary coordination sphere) are known to produce changes in key properties of the metal centers that can affect reactivity. Noncovalent interactions are the most common and influential forces that regulate the properties of secondary coordination spheres, which leads to complexities in structure that are often difficult to achieve in synthetic systems. Using key architectural features from the active sites of metalloproteins as inspiration, we have developed molecular systems that enforce intramolecular hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) around a metal center via incorporation of H-bond donors and acceptors into rigid ligand scaffolds. We have utilized these molecular species to probe mechanistic aspects of biological dioxygen activation and water oxidation. This Account describes the stabilization and characterization of unusual M-oxo and heterobimetallic complexes. These types of species have been implicated in a range of oxidative processes in biology but are often difficult to study because of their inherent reactivity. Our H-bonding ligand systems allowed us to prepare an Fe-III-oxo species directly from the activation of O-2 that was subsequently oxidized to form a monomeric Fe-IV-oxo species with an S = 2 spin state, similar to those species proposed as key intermediates in non-heme monooxygenases. We also demonstrated that a single Mn-III-oxo center that was prepared from water could be converted to a high-spin MnV-oxo species via stepwise oxidation, a process that mimics the oxidative charging of the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of photosystem II. Current mechanisms for photosynthetic O-O bond formation invoke a MnIV-oxyl species rather than the isoelectronic MnV-oxo system as the key oxidant based on computational studies. However, there is no experimental information to support the existence of a Mn-oxyl radical. We therefore probed the amount of spin density on the oxido ligand of our complexes using EPR spectroscopy in conjunction with oxygen-17 labeling. Our findings showed that there is a significant amount of spin on the oxido ligand, yet the M-oxo bonds are best described as highly covalent and there is no indication that an oxyl radical is formed. These results offer the intriguing possibility that high-spin M-oxo complexes are involved in O-O bond formation in biology. Ligand redesign to incorporate H-bond accepting units (sulfonamido groups) simultaneously provided a metal ion binding pocket, adjacent H-bond acceptors, and an auxiliary binding site for a second metal ion. These properties allowed us to isolate a series of heterobimetallic complexes of Fe-III and Mn-III in which a group II metal ion was coordinated within the secondary coordination sphere. Examination of the influence of the second metal ion on the electron transfer properties of the primary metal center revealed unexpected similarities between Ca-II and Sr-II ions, a result with relevance to the OEC. In addition, the presence of a second metal ion was found to prevent intramolecular oxidation of the ligand with an O atom transfer reagent.