Kinetics and thermodynamics of CO2 binding to a metal centre promotes CO2 reduction†
Abstract
Herein, we report the design, synthesis, and characterization of a series of manganese terpyridine dicarbonyl derivatives (1–5) each covalently bonded to a proximal amide moiety as a proton relay. By finely tuning the kinetics of binding of CO2 to the metal centre, we improved the turnover frequency (TOF) for the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) from 325 s−1 to 1359 s−1. The performances ranked this series of catalysts among the most promising earth-abundant molecular catalysts for CO2-to-CO conversion.