Bio-Inspired Dioxygen Activation and Catalysis By Redox Metal Complexes

In nature, redox enzymes mediated dioxygen activation with oxidations proceeds smoothly and highly selectively under ambient temperature, whereas in the chemical industry, versatile oxidations are commonly performed at elevated temperature, which leads to the occurrence of radical chain process, thus causing low product selectivity and environmental pollution. This chapter will first introduce the strategies of enzymes including P450s, methane monooxygenase, dioxygenases in dioxygen activation and catalysis, thus illustrating how enzymes activate dioxygen and selectively transfer the resulting active oxygen to their substrates. Then, inspired by enzymatic dioxygen activation, the progress in biomimetic dioxygen activation with related catalytic oxidations by synthetic redox metal complexes will be presented, and its current challenges will be discussed as well. Finally, a recent new strategy for dioxygen activation and catalysis, that is, Lewis acid promoted dioxygen activation by redox metal complexes, will be introduced; this new strategy may have more closely biomimicked enzymatic dioxygen activation than those traditional strategies, thus shedding new light on catalyst design for industrial oxidations.

Keywords: Bio-inspired O2 activation, Catalytic oxidation, Enzymatic O2 activation.