Decay kinetics of sensitive bioinorganic species in a SuperFocus mixer at ambient conditions

Abstract

We performed studies on the oxygenation of a copper(I) complex targeting the intrinsic kinetics of this reaction in a continuous flow setup. It is an example reaction for the metal-based activation of dioxygen. For these experiments we used a SuperFocus mixer, a customised micro mixer with fast mixing behaviour. By means of this setup, we were able for the first time to detect the formation and decay of a thermally very sensitive bis(μ-oxo)dicopper species at ambient temperature. Comparing these data to results from a stopped-flow setup we could confirm the performance of the SuperFocus mixer setup. The rate constant for the decay of the bis(μ-oxo)dicopper species was determined to be 0.90 s⁻¹ using the SuperFocus mixer and to be 1.57 s⁻¹ by stopped-flow at slightly different temperatures.